More than 28 years after it was built, Groendal Secondary School in Franschhoek has benefited from a programme established by the Garden Cities Archway Foundation 16 years ago, to provide halls for disadvantaged schools in the Western Cape.
Groendal’s more than R8,3 million school hall was officially opened on Sunday 24 November as one of 100 built so far by the foundation.
The Franschhoek valley is known primarily as a tourist destination and for its picturesque wine estates, but there’s another side to this idyllic village. There are schools in and around the valley that are historically under-resourced along with hundreds of others throughout the Western Cape.
It was for these disadvantaged schools that Garden Cities decided to launch a programme to build as many school halls as possible, to redress the enormous inequalities that remain from the legacy of the apartheid era.
School halls are considered by educators one of the primary tools for giving children a comprehensive education.
In the opinion of every educator polled in a survey conducted by Archway, halls are essential, but over a million schoolchildren are still without a hall in the Western Cape.
Malvin Kulsen has been at Groendal Secondary for nearly his whole career, and as long as the school has existed. This hall is a dream come true and will add value to teaching and learning at Groendal Secondary.
“It is our duty as educators to open the doors of teaching and learning, but the responsibility of learners to enter,” Kulsen said.
“Unfortunately, Groendal Secondary fell into one of the phases of school planning in the province, where a covered quadrangle was considered a kind of hall substitute. It has little value because of its proximity to the classrooms, so using it as a hall while classes were in progress was challenging.”
But now the full complement of 880 learners at the school can assemble in their hall for all the major functions, for which it was built and the huge number of purposes that will involve only some of them, such as indoor sports, theatrical rehearsals and performances, specialist tuition and writing exams in peace and quiet.
The school has a good academic record, despite the social and economic realities, and among its former matriculants are a law lecturer, accountants, teachers, high-profile civil servants and entrepreneurs, among them a highly successful, internationally trained chocolatier.
It also has the distinction of having isiXhosa as a first language along with Afrikaans.
This year, which marks the centenary of Garden Cities, the Foundation has reached the stage when 100 halls of the 750 originally identified as being needed have been completed and handed over.
The roll-out of the halls, more recently accelerated by a financial partnership with the Western Cape Education Department (WCED), will continue.
The halls are provided at an average cost of over R8 million. When they were first built the cost was only R2 million.
“The goalposts have changed, but not our goal, to level the playing fields for the schoolchildren of the Western Cape,” says Garden Cities Group CEO John Matthews, who has driven the work of the foundation since its establishment, when he took over as CEO.
