We provide tuition from grades 8 – 12 and our learners come from Cosmo City as well as the surrounding informal settlements. Since Cosmo City Secondary began, our matric results have been steadily improving:
• In our first year of operation – 2007 – we obtained a 45% pass rate,
• The next year, this jumped to 61%, and
• In 2013 we obtained a record 85% matric pass rate. According to legislation,
government subsidises state schools with a certain amount of money. On top of that, they need to charge school fees to supplement their grants. We are a no-fee school, which means that we don’t ask our learners’ parents to pay school fees. This means that we need to survive only on the money that we get from the department of education as well as the money that we can earn ourselves. This situation has left us in quite a difficult position and there are certain basic resources that we need to make our school function smoothly and to guarantee our learners the quality of education that they so desperately need in order to become fully functioning and productive citizens of South Africa. Examples of what we need are:
• Chairs for learners to sit on in class as some learners are forced to sit on the tables because of the lack of chairs. We also desperately need cupboards for our teachers to store their belongings in the staff room. At the moment, they are forced to leave their personal items and class prep on tables in the staff room.
• White printer paper: the Department of Education provides us with the exams on disks that we need to print out, which makes white printer paper a necessity as if we don’t have this our learners won’t be able to write their exams.
• In the past, we’ve tried to communicate with the parents of our learners via printed newsletters. Unfortunately, this wasn’t very successful as these publications weren’t handed over. What we’ve found that works is SMSing the parents but as we have to buy airtime for our cellphones and send the SMSes that way, this becomes very expensive. What we need is a bulk SMS system that can send SMSes to all our parents at the same time. There is so much more that we desperately need but couldn’t put it down because of a lack of space! We’d love for you to come and visit to see how we are trying to change the lives of our future leaders. Give us a ring on 011 875 2334 or 083 7072456. Alternatively, you can send us an email on [email protected].
