Chronicle Editor
Tafadzwa Chibukwa, Features Reporter
Milton High School in Bulawayo boasts of a rich alumni community of professionals who have made a positive impact in their various spheres of influence.
Since its establishment in 1910, Milton High School has over the years grown in leaps and bounds and continued to be fertile ground for nurturing charismatic gentlemen.
Some of the school’s alumni include SuperSport commentator and former cricketer Mpumelelo Mbangwa, former Highlanders Football Club player and Bantu Rovers coach Methembe Ndlovu, Zak Hawa, the man behind Fazak Home & Hyper, Bekithemba Nkomo, an industrialist and former chairperson of the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair and Jabu Mthethwa, an orthopaedic surgeon among many others.
Beyond academia, the school works hard to empower its pupils with relevant life skills and nurture their talents.
True to their motto, ‘Quit ye like men be strong’, Milton High School has continued to strive for excellence.
The school’s mission is to offer relevant academic, physical, moral, technical and practical inclusive education of the highest quality for learners to realise their full potential for their own benefit and that of the global village, for which they have followed through their practical nature of equipping pupils with co-curricular skills.
Milton High School headmaster Mr Similo Ncube said instead of basing on theories and narratives when teaching pupils, the school aims at doing things more practically.
He said the school is doing so to reduce wasted time on theories that pupils would struggle to exercise in the future, hence the need to start teaching them the most practical way.
“Our aim is to equip pupils with skills that will help them in their future. It’s pointless as a school to maintain impressive theory pass rates and drill pupils theoretically yet they lack the practical aspect that will apply in their lives in the near future,” said Mr Ncube.
With an overall enrolment of 854 pupils, the school has maintained an impressive pass rate, despite disturbances as a result of the global Covid-19 pandemic.
In the previous national examinations, one of the school’s best scoring pupils at ‘O’ Level had nine As and their highest at ‘A’ Level had 20 points.
The school offers all technical and practical subjects from ‘O’ Level to ‘A’ Level.
The headmaster said the school makes sure that every pupil takes up at least two practical subjects registered on their timetable.
As an indicator that the school is doing well where practical subjects are concerned, Mr Ncube said they had adopted the Continuous Assessment Learning Areas (CALAs) well and have not had challenges with assessments.
“Last year, we were celebrating some of our ‘A’ Level pupils who co-authored an anthology as part of their fulfilment of the CALA. The anthology, which had various themes, was named ‘Qeqetsha Mahlabezulu’,” said Mr Ncube.
Milton High School pupils recently emerged second nationally in the Emergination Africa competition after learners produced a breakfast cereal.
They won US$5 000 to start their own company.
At the just ended Literature and Ndebele Festival in Bulawayo, the school achieved Best Overall Secondary School Poetry for 2022 with a learner at the school, Richard Banda, coming out first.
The deputy headmaster, Mr Malusi Mazibuko said the school has been refurbishing its old infrastructure with the help of their former students.
“We’ve embarked on fixing the school fields to restore our legacy of being the best sports school in town. The rugby fields and hockey fields are being refurbished. We also managed to drill boreholes last year; they’re working to our advantage in the sense that we’ve shifted from relying on council water for supply but we’re now self-reliant and can maintain our needs using our boreholes,” said Mr Mazibuko.
The school is in the process of re-fencing its perimeter with plans in the pipeline to repaint the old worn out roof in order to give the school a fresh look.–@Sagepapie14
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