Chronicle Editor
Angela Sibanda, Chronicle Reporter
ST Columbus High School has made it easy for its pupils aged 16 and above to acquire driver’s licences after the institution made acquiring a licence part of its non-formal education activities.
The school offers driving lessons through a partnership with a local driving school and (Vehicle Inspectorate Department) VID instructors.
Twenty-seven pupils sat for exams under the school’s learner licence programme this year and 23 passed. One pupil already has a driver’s licence.
Besides offering Zimsec subjects, St Columbus offers five Higher Education Examination Council (HEXCO) subjects; machine shop engineering; car maintenance, cabinet making, welding and computer science. Most pupils who undertake these subjects move to polytechnics for skills training.
St Columbus is championing the better schools programme and has become one of the exemplary schools in Bulawayo. The school was awarded the Secretary’s Merit Award this year, the third award since its establishment 42 years ago.
Located in Makokoba, St Columbus School has an enrolment of 954 learners; 466 boys and 488 girls.
The school won its first Secretary’s Merit Award in 1979 under the leadership of its founder late Reverend Canon Edward Burroughs, the second award came in 2011 and then the recent one.
The school got the last two merit awards under the leadership of the current headmistress Ms Uyapo Ndebele.
The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education introduced the Secretary’s Merit Award as a supervision and motivational strategy to improve educational services in the country.
While many schools experienced a radical decrease in their pass rate, St Columbus recorded an improvement in the Ordinary and Advanced Levels pass rate by 7,4 percent and 2,6 percent, despite disruptions to learning caused by Covid-19.
Last year, the O-Level pass rate was 98,3 percent and the A-Level pass rate was 91,2 percent. One of its pupils, Jejaira Siwela obtained 11As at O-Level.
In an interview, Ms Ndebele, who has been at the learning institution for almost 15 years, said the good passes were a result of team work and dedication by both pupils and the teachers.
“Last year the school strived and recorded an increased pass rate owing to teachers who started early with the syllabus and when the lock down happened, the children were almost done with the syllabuses and it became easy for them to study at home,” she said.
The school has a number of remarkable projects that contribute to its income.
There is a nutritional garden and a fisheries project with 2 000 tilapia fish.
“We started most of our projects in 2017 and we have been making an income from then and currently we are selling green mealies to the local community,” she said
“We also have a well-kept soccer pitch that is usually used by premier soccer clubs that pay the school so that we can maintain the grounds and implement other developments.”
The school anticipates to start harvesting fish in six months.
It has choumolia, tomatoes and carrots. It used to keep rabbits but because of feeding challenges as a result of the lockdown, the project was discontinued but will resume once the situation normalises.
The school has a supportive School Development Committee (SDC).
The SDC installed a solar system in the administration block to the tune of ZW$1,49 million as the learning institution was facing challenges with load shedding.
Now, school offices can work throughout the day with no challenges.
Apart from playing leadership roles, Ms Ndebele is also a motherly figure to both teachers and pupils, one of them is the acting Junior President of Zimbabwe, Menzumuhle Ncube. Ncube is the current junior MP for Makokoba and recently participated virtually in an international debate as the captain of the Zimbabwe National Debate Team which came first in the Dutch Schools debate championships.
The school has other achievers; in basketball there is Takundanashe Mupatsi who was selected into the U17 national team that participated in the AUSC games in Lesotho.
Ms Ndebele, who is in her early 60s, has been in the position of headmistress from an early age and has also worked with a number of schools in Matabeleland region.
“I became a school head at the age of 24 and it was a few years after Independence. My appointment stirred a lot of controversy from the society and it meant that I had to work extra hard to prove myself.
“I started off at Nechilibe in Binga and I have worked with schools such as Lobengula High, Msiteli, Masotsha and Townsend,” she added.
In 2000, Ms Ndebele was awarded with the American Biological Woman of the Year award by the American Biographical Institute in recognition of the work that she had done in the schools that she had worked with.
As the school was being awarded the merit award by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, Mrs Tumisang Thabela recently, the school headmistress paid tribute to St Columbus High School founder, the late Rev Burroughs who died in 2009.
“He had a vision of a secondary school that would provide a holistic education to the people of Makokoba in the late seventies. Today his vision is now a national vision that has resulted in the implementation of the new curriculum in every school.
“May his soul rest in eternal peace,” said Ms Ndebele.
Online Reporter