N Pandor: Dover Farm School matriculants reunion

8 July 2006

“A shining example”

Mr Sipho Ndlovu
Mr Rick Loftus
Mr Ken Bialek
Ms Anne Schneller
Ms Margaret Holtschlag (guests from the United States of America)
Teachers
Alumni

Thank you for inviting me to attend this wonderful occasion, celebrating “10
years of excellence” at Dover Combined Farm School.

Dover is an example to us all, a shining example of what can be achieved
with commitment and resources.

Schools like Dover will educate a vanguard of youths who will advance and
sustain the development of South Africa.

Schools like Dover, and there are many others, show that inherited advantage
does not determine learner attainment.

Because that is what the literature tells us. It tells us that
socio-economic status determines whether you will do well or poorly at school.
And that is what most of our education commentators tell us as well.

Recently one leading activist turned banker said the following at a public
hearing:

“The research clearly shows if you are black, particularly if you are rural
or poor schooling and education does not work for you.”

Education does not work for you!! It may work for someone else but it will
not work for you.

What he was saying was that if your parents are black and poor, then the
education our first democratic government provides will do little to liberate
you, little to offer you opportunities denied your parents.

If your parents are black and poor, then you will also remain black and
poor.

That was the message. In his view our education system is in crisis.

When I look at this school, when I look at its remarkable achievements, when
I look at the remarkable commitment of its teachers and staff, then I am
tempted to ask, what crisis?

Only last week the Financial Mail, which is not well known for devoting
column inches to schools that perform well, devoted a full page to two schools
in the township of Ivory Park (“Ivory Park sets the gold Standard”, 6 July
2006). Now I have been to Ivory Park. I was invited there last October to open
the new Ivory Park Secondary. It had been a platoon school but a new school was
built “a pledge redeemed, a promise fulfilled, and a dream come true”.

Barely a year later, Ivory Park has been named one of the 12 “schools of
excellence” in Gauteng. Its success is the more remarkable, given its lack of
resources and the number of vulnerable children in its pupil body.

According to the Financial Mail report, the school principals of Ivory Park
Secondary and Eqinisweni Secondary (the second school of excellence) realised
that if they were to perform as well as former model C, they needed to weigh
their lack of resources against an extra commitment, extra classes, and extra
elbow grease.

Principal Mpoku Tau (Eqinisweni) says: “Black people accept mediocre
performance. I was disturbed by the complacent attitude of teachers when I
started. Everyone was just happy with a 50% pass rate. If we say we are happy
with 50% what are we saying about the other half that it is okay for them to
fail?”

How right he is. It is his high expectation of his pupils, that all should
pass, that has transformed his school. It is oversubscribed, so oversubscribed
that there is an extraordinary 60 pupils per class.

I do not mean to rain on your parade, good Dover school community, by
talking about the success of other schools, and urban schools at that. But I do
want to draw attention to the success of schools that the pundits tell us
should not be doing well, schools that have been able to buck the trend because
of our commitment to providing quality education to all and not simply to the
easy few.

What is the secret of your success? How have you been able to buck the
trend, to prove history wrong? It is a combination of the commitment of
principal and staff and the ability to bring together government and corporate
to settle on that winning formula for success.

Clearly farm schools have been beset by a range of problems that you will
not find in township or suburban schools.

The history of farm schools on the whole, with exceptions like this one, has
been a deplorable one in which the dreams of many young children have been
destroyed. There was a difficult, but not intractable, problem in the situation
of a public school on private land. In too many cases the landowner stood in
opposition to the state. In too many cases landowners have not signed an
agreement that guarantees security of occupation and use of and access to the
school. Too often maintenance and services have been allowed to decline or
stagnate.

And 16 out of every 100 public schools are on private land, not only farms,
but on land owned by churches, hospitals and mines. So we are not talking about
a small number of schools.

Here at Dover with the support of an enlightened landowner and a range of
other interested parties you have reached a solution that is a model for other
farm schools in the country.

You have demonstrated that it is possible for rural schools to overcome the
inherent disadvantages of geography. And there are disadvantages. All our
systemic evaluations show that learner attainment is lower in rural areas than
in urban areas. And this is partly a problem associated with attracting
teachers to live outside the speed and excitement of the modern metropolis; few
teachers appear to be able to cope with the relative tranquillity of the rural
life. And that is why we are considering incentives to encourage teachers to
take the leap and to commit to improving standards where we know their roots
are historically weak.

But Dover has managed to overcome these limitations. You do not achieve such
excellent results without having good teachers. The excellent pass rate in
higher-grade physical science, the 100% overall pass rate and the 91%
university endorsement rate bear testimony to this.

The history of this school demonstrates that good education can be provided
in rural schools if they are built on strong and stable co-operative
public-private partnerships (PPP).

In closing, I encourage you to turn this 10-year reunion into a proper
alumni association so that you take advantage of your success. Allow a little
of your success to flow back into the school in the form of hard cash or other
less tangible resources.

All our schools need to have alumni associations so that pupils can be proud
of where they come from and teach that pride to the generations who come after
them.

I am confident that your school will continue to discover and educate others
like Nxumalo Sandiso Ngcebo (who obtained six distinctions last year) and who I
am told is already a role model for learners here, and in the surrounding
areas. Success breeds success. And an alumni association is the best way to
keep in touch with that success.

I thank you

Issued by: Department of Education
8 July 2006