2015 here we come

As promised last year we are doubling our effort in 2015. We have gained valuable experience in running a reading project, our infrastructure is in place and we have partners who contribute to what will hopefully be another very successful year.

• The Click Foundation is once more sponsoring the access to Reading Eggs which makes all of this possible;
• The Kameeldrift Early Learning Centre (KELC) gives us access to 14 Grade R learners and a dedicated room for our Monday and Wednesday sessions;
• and we have a new partner in the Leeuwfontein Primary Farm School.

The Leeuwfontein School was established in 1957. The then owner of the farm Leeuwfontein, mr Chaplain, invited Father Reginald Webber of the Roman Catholic Church to start a school for the black children of the vicinity. After changing hands in the eighties the school was taken over by the Department of Basic Education early in the new century. Additional classrooms were added and in 2006 the school at Baviaanspoort Correctional Services was closed and merged with Leeuwfontein. The numbers jumped from 70 to 210.

Today the school has 348 learners and nine teachers under the leadership of ms Catherine Mavundlela. Most of the children are bussed in from Plot 175, Baviaanspoort and the extensive smallholding areas around the Roodeplaat dam.

The school has given us one hour each on Tuesday and Friday mornings to run the reading programme with a group of 30 Grade 1 learners and a dedicated room and furniture. Of the 23 readers with whom we finished last year seven are in this school, three are still in pre-primary school and the rest have disappeared, probably into the countryside to stay with family.

Leeuwfontein’s Grade 1 teachers, mss Esther Motana and Onica Nkosi with the principal, ms Catherine Mavundlela

There is no doubt in our minds that we are on the right track: regularly statements are made regarding the pressing need for meaningful intervention in the foundation phase of education if we want to make the world an equal opportunity place:

• The fourth item in the 2015 Gates Foundation Annual Letter states that ‘Better software will revolutionize learning’, as an introduction to their donation to various educational initiatives (gatesnotes.com/2015-annual-letter?page=4&lang=en&WT.mc_id=01_21_2015_AL2015-GF_GFO_domain_Top_21)
• When the South African poverty report was released in February (12 million South Africans live in extreme poverty) the statistician general pointed out that good education is necessary to get us out of this predicament.

And as Benjamin Zander said at the 2009 World Economic Forum, when one is faced with such a challenge you have three options: resignation which says ‘Yes, that is just how it is’, anger which asks ‘How did things get so out of hand?’ or making a contribution and saying ‘Here is something I can do’. This is what we have chosen for ourselves for 2015.