MEDIA STATEMENT: SCHOOL GOVERNING BODY: KING EDWARD SCHOOL, MATATIELE
15 JANUARY 2019
We, as the School Governing Body of King Edward High School are deeply saddened by the way in which our efforts to ensure that every child, regardless of race, has equal opportunity to do well in school have been portrayed by the Sunday Times. Furthermore, we are most concerned about the sensationalist and defamatory article headings, selective use of photographs, factually incorrect statements and misquotes and clearly identifiable images of our learners that have been published.
Nevertheless, we are very willing to engage with journalists to understand the complexities of integrating learners who speak different home languages – and who enter school at very different levels of second language competency.
One of the biggest challenges in public education is that African-language speaking children are required to be taught in English from Grade 4. Many children simply cannot cope with this transition and consequently fail and drop out of school. In an effort to address this, and provide a solid foundation for all learners, King Edward School has introduced a system of two years of Pre-Grade R early learning for children of all races. By the time these children reach Grade 1, they have the foundations of language and numeracy skills and can thrive at school. The fact that the school has been declared a National School of Excellence, and achieved a 100% matric pass rate for 18 of the past 21 years, is the reason for the high demand from other learners to be accommodated in the school.
We have expanded the school greatly to accommodate this demand and this has changed the demographics of the school significantly, so that our learner population closely reflects the demographics of our country.
Unfortunately, African-language speaking children joining the school at a later stage have not had the benefit of the early learning and must acquire English language proficiency in a shorter time frame. Nonetheless, we are committed to ensuring that they reach the same levels of language and numeracy competency as any other children. The success of this strategy is, once again, reflected in the numerous matric distinctions received by all our learners and a bachelors’ admission rate consistently around 90%. While most of our classes are completely mixed, the class for accelerated language development, is inevitably comprised of second language English speakers due to our intake.
In keeping with national language policy, our school also makes provision for an Afrikaans-speaking class, and the uncomfortable reality is that, while open to all, the only Afrikaans-speaking children in the school happen to be white in most years. We are also the only school in the province that makes provision for Afrikaans home language children for hundreds of kilometers. While this class is smaller in number, it has the disadvantage of being multi-grade.
These are the realities of trying to provide opportunity to all children in a rural community in South Africa, and in overcoming the legacies of apartheid. If there are better ways of achieving these goals, we will work to implement them. What we will not do is jeopardise the educational prospects of the children with solutions that don’t address their realities.
We will cooperate fully with the Department of Education and look forward to working with them in implementing any recommendations that put the interests of all our children first. Not only is that our Constitutional imperative, but we love and are committed to every one of them.
Statement issued by Adv Andrew Duminy, School Governing Body of King Edward High School (Matatiele), 15 January 2019
