With Grade 12 students are almost upon their final secondary school examinations, those in the lower grades are still plodding along in their quest for education and a better life.
Most weekdays, children in bright and smart uniforms trek to school, bags in tow with learning material and lunch boxes filled with goodies to energise them – while those without rely on school feeding schemes.
The feeding schemes help poor children, who would have dropped out, to remain in school and have a chance to get educated and, hopefully, use it to better themselves and their families.
Some children interviewed by this paper expressed pride in having the chance to access education in their neighbourhood. Even at a tender age they said education was the key to everything, including access to better opportunities, money, pleasure, houses, cars, good clothes, better houses and less stress.
Two children found standing proudly next to their school logo, said MC Weiler Primary School was giving them a chance to access better opportunities in life. “We like our school and our teachers because they give us knowledge to be better people in future. We also make friends who share with us other useful information,” said seven-year-old Boitumelo Bopape.
Despite the area’s depressed social and economic conditions, Alexandra has a plethora of institutions to nurture its children to a better life, including well-resourced early childhood development centres, primary and secondary schools, public libraries and colleges. Also, it has access to a range of opportunities for scholarships and bursaries to tertiary and technical colleges, and also volunteer tutors and mentors who descend on the area on weekends to help students and pupils catch up with their learning. Others do so through edutainment programmes.
With this range of support, only the sky is the limit for these children – as has been proved through an incremental improvement in the matric pass rate in recent years.
The challenge is to maintain this trend of improvement.
