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THE two Government schools that have won the latest Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education’s Secretary’s Merit Awards show the excellent results that can be obtained when schools think outside the box and work very hard on quality of education and ensuring that the children they teach can learn.
Amandas Junior School in Concession and Highfield High 1 School in Harare won these latest awards, symbolised by a new bell, through the way they worked through the Covid-19 pandemic managing to both follow all the standard procedures to maintain the safety of staff and pupils and yet managing at the same time to ensure no pupil fell behind.
When you consider the two schools were operating on Government budgets, high Government staff to pupil ratios, and very largely Government equipment, it is fairly obvious that both managed to go flat out to find alternative ways of giving lessons, teaching pupils and ensuring that the necessary interaction between staff and pupils was continued in exceptionally difficult circumstances.
Amandas is a former “European Division” primary school for the children of tobacco farmers in northern Mashonaland Central and has been transformed since independence into a special focus school that can pioneer new methods and techniques in a much larger school. It obviously has done this exceptionally well.
Highfield High 1 was another colonial establishment, this time for a high density suburb, that managed even in the colonial era to push the envelope, gaining its A-level forms in 1979 on the eve of independence, a double achievement in that era, and since then has been quietly creating and maintaining a reputation for excellence. Obviously it has now been doing even better than expected.
The Secretary’s Bells are designed not just as a recognition of exceptional quality, innovation and service to communities, but as an example to the rest of the education sector, that if the winning schools each year can do this, then what is stopping other schools from becoming better.
So what does create the success? These are Government schools, where the allocation of staff and the budget per pupil are set as the same for all public schools, without favourites. It is here that the staff, the parents and the head come into the picture. Different schools have different teams and different team captains.
Perhaps the most important person is the head. We all know from our own school days, and from dealing with the heads of our children’s schools, how important a good head is, and how much we need to hang on to a great head.
We have all been at, or have known schools, that rose from the average quite fast when a first-class head won the top post, and was able to use professional leadership, administrative skill and that vital component of leadership to inspire the rest of the staff, mobilise the pupils and create links with the parent community that can make so much of a difference.
Almost all schools a few decades old have the legends of some great head in their past, and if they are lucky have a new legend being created at the present moment.
Admittedly the head cannot act alone, and so we have heard of first-class professionals who were never able to inspire others. But where there is good leadership that inspires, and the rest of the teams can catch the flame, some remarkable progress is made.
All teachers are qualified, and like in any organisation they will vary from the truly enthusiastic to the dull and even the lazy. Where the school develops an ethos that all put in the maximum, then we move forward fast. Again it is the team and the captain.
Parent bodies are critical. Highfield High 1 has always had this sort of backing through its School Development Committee.
The suburb, which is the school’s catchment, does not have much in the way of rich parents, but it does have a parent body of solid citizens who want the best for their children and are prepared to work for this.
As we have seen in some of the poorest rural schools, those where parents for week after week burn bricks, and push in wheelbarrow loads of stone and sand for the next extension, that while rich parents ready with bank transfers are useful, they are not essential if the whole parent body is committed in a united and co-ordinated action.
When we look at the wide range of activities at Highfield High 1, it is obvious that more than those on the payroll and the resources from the Government are involved.
There must be a serious commitment from a lot of skilled and active parents prepared to roll up their sleeves and be part of their children’s school.
The two schools that won the bells must have been getting a lot right before Covid-19 hit. But when that potential disaster arrived very suddenly the schools were able to find out what they could do, what each element could do, and then figure out a way of using available resources, and no school ever has enough let alone Government schools from less-rich communities, and then mobilise staff, pupils and parents to make these knowledgeable and innovative plans work.
Innovation, organisation, co-ordination and commitment. It is a simple recipe but it needs to be applied.
Things might be normal now, but obviously those two schools are even stronger and more able to move ahead.
Nothing quite inspires as much as success, and the recognition of that success will be an extra motivation, the head of education in Zimbabwe pointing out that this is the way to fix a school, any school, the way to inspire a school and the way to make a school better every year.
We hope the rest of the schools look, listen and learn and then apply in their own ways and in their own communities the successful lessons, so everyone can move ahead.
Online Reporter