Teaching under a tree to top kasi school
School's founder and principal retires happy
From teaching pupils under a tree to bowing out as the principal of one of the top township schools in Gauteng.
This is the story of James Wandile Makhubu, 62, the former principal and founder of Unity Secondary School in Daveyton, east of Johannesburg, who retired a happy man in January.
Gauteng education MEC Panyaza Lesufi on Wednesday named his school as the one of the top three township schools in the province.
For 2020, the school received a 90.88% pass rate, with 159 of its 340 matriculants receiving bachelor admissions and 98 diploma admissions. The school also produced 159 distinctions, with four pupils receiving four distinctions each.
“This is my sore point. It’s the first time in more than 10 years we don’t have one pupil with six or more distinctions,” Makhubu told Sowetan’s sister publication Sunday Times Daily this week.
With limited resources, he believes the school was able to achieve great results because of the brand it had built over the years.
It started more than two decades ago as a makeshift school for young people who were not attending school. Today, it is one of the township pupils want to go to because of the good results it produces.
“One day, I approached them [youngsters] and asked why they were not in school, and they said schools didn’t want to admit them as they were seen as troublesome,” he said.
“We started as an ‘illegal’ school because the school was not recognised.”
With the help of five other teachers who were unemployed, he committed to teaching those young people. The local mayor at the time, Tom Boya, convinced the governschools ment to formally recognise the school.
Makhubu, who was already employed at another local school, taught mathematics during his lunch breaks and in the afternoons. The classes were held under a tree and later moved to vacant classrooms in local primary schools – but that plan was short-lived.
They then moved to the local community hall, from 1993 until 1996, when a proper school was built. The name “Unity” was chosen to symbolise the efforts of everyone the school had brought together.
Their first matric results came in 1993, and the school had a 48% pass rate.
But of all the years, 2020 was the hardest. “We had nine teachers infected with Covid19 last year. So every time we had a positive case, we had to close the school for 14 days. That really made us lose a lot of time in class,” he said.
On a positive note, only seven out of 347 matrics dropped out this year.
Makhubu said five of the teachers he started the school with (as volunteer teachers) are still there, as different heads of department. One of them is Gloria Sibande, who was the deputy principal and will now be acting principal.