ACA Ndlambe’s first school to open
Half of all grade 1 to 12s arrive, with all PPE for pupils and staff provided without government help
Alexandria Christian Academy (ACA) became the first local school to reopen to grades 1 – 12 on Monday, with about half the student body showing up.
Principal Gretel Olivier said it was possible to reopen because of the space they had and the small class sizes.
“With the information we have, we can open Grade R on Wednesday,” she said.
“We are getting a lot of criticism from other schools, because they feel our pupils are unfairly at an advantage. It is however important to note that we paid in excess of R35,000 from our savings to supply all our own PPE’s [personal protective equipment].
“We got no support from the department of education, although our parents are all taxpayers,” Olivier said.
She said the entire staff rolled up their sleeves and helped with cleaning the school in line with Covid-19 safety requirements.
“We feel that the show must go on, and our pupils can only be educated thoroughly in Covid-19 and related matters in a balanced way,” Oliver said.
School starts 15 minutes earlier in the morning, to make time for health screening. Pupils are screened and then go into their learning centres immediately.
“Because of the water situation in Alexandria, we had to make mobile handwashing stations,” she said.
On the first day back at school, teachers did diagnostic tests with pupils to see how well they learnt at home, as well as Covid-19 safety training.
“The school has been reorganised to ensure social distancing. About half of all students arrived.
We have different break times for small groups, and have put all contact sport on hold. We will only do physical education,” she said.
“We are only focusing on core curriculum. Our high school pupils are already into their exams.
School is breaking up for the winter holidays on June 12, when all academic programmes for the second term are completed.”