A St George’s Church of England (CE) Primary School representative visited Cathcart Roman Catholic Primary School for five days last week after a partnership of 11 months.
The two schools were partnered through the British council that promotes partnerships between schools in the United Kingdom and South African education sectors to enrich education, promote global citizenship and build international trust and understanding.
Ian Tait, St George’s CE deputy headmaster who represented the school in Cathcart, said after they were partnered with the school they started to liaise by email.
“The pupils in England started to do some work in geography to locate where South Africa was and we started doing a comparison on the two areas.
“We did a study about former South African president Nelson Mandela, his biography and all his achievements, also on apartheid and the inequalities people faced,” Tait said.
Tait said on his visit he wanted to find out how life had changed after what they had studied and how South Africans lived post-apartheid and mostly their approach to education. He hoped he would get all that through Cathcart Primary and a few other places he will visit in South Africa.
The first thing Tait did in Cathcart was change the computer lab which, he said, was a total mess and no student would fit in it with all the broken equipment kept in it.
He also mentioned that in England they did not understand how fortunate they were that every child had access to the internet, either via laptops or tablets.
“The children in the school did not even now what email was, while students of the same age in England have full access to internet and are more advanced,” he said.
St George’s donated four laptops for the pupils and a tablet for the headmaster. Tait said they hoped their communication would improve through the gadgets and pupils would communicate and learn from each other.
“We look forward to maintaining and growing this partnership as it will be a great experience for pupils and teachers.
“Already St George’s has assisted with 50 uniforms which spoke volumes about the rate of poverty and unemployment in our community. We are grateful for the help,” said Nimrod Nuntsu, principal of Cathcart RC.
Tait said the first thing he would tell people in the UK was about the friendliness of people of South Africa.
“The pupils welcomed me with a fascinating dance which I thought was so beautiful because I had never seen it before,” he said.