Newly opened schools to eradicate overcrowding of learners
Roodepan - The 2 newly opened schools in Jan Kempdorp and Roodepan community are set to eradicate the issue of leaner overcrowding at schools which has always been a challenge to the department in both areas.
The schools are Valspan High School and Rodepan High School, both schools opened when schools reopened for the second term of learning, the schools will be offering lessons from grade 8 to 11.
With the new human settlement development in Roodepan and the fact that the area only had 1 high school, the number of learners in Pescodia Secondary School started to grow in an alarming rate which eventually led to overcrowding.
Both schools are No Fees Schools and they will also provide the nutrition programme for the learners, as they opened doors for learning and teaching for the first time, Vaslpan had a total of 823 learners with 27 educators meanwhile Roodepan has enrolled 508 learners with 17 educators.
Education MEC Martha Bartlett said the opening of the 2 schools comes as a relief for both educators and learners, “Both educator and learners requires conducive learning environment for learning and teaching progress, educators find it difficult to teach high number of learners at a time, in some cases you find that one educator have to teach about 6 classes of the same grade, overcrowding has always been a challenge at our schools. The opening of the 2 schools will also be a relief for learners who walked long distances to access school”, MEC said.
In addition the schools have ICT Media Center and top class sports facilities which the MEC believes they should be used to keep the learners out of the streets after school.
Newly appointed principal at Roodepan, Roy Fredericks promised that the school will be turned into a place of excellence; he said although he faces a challenge of assembling his team together he remains positive that they will achieve the results.
“This day will go down in the history of Roodepan community, not so many schools in the province are built in this fashion, we going to strive for excellence not only on curriculum matters but also in sports, the facilities we have in this school are of high standard so we cannot manage not to utilize them effectively”, said Fredericks.
Roodepan High grade 8 learner, Cheran Morris could not hide her excitement about the fact that she is part of the history in making, she said she looks forward to her studies at the new school and she is also expecting to make new friends.