LOUIS TRICHARDT - The Masedi Public School in Tshikota, Louis Trichardt, improved its matric passing rate with 2,8%, despite serious handicaps.

Eleven of the 41 candidates at the school, passed. Three of the eleven passed with exemption.

Candidates for the matric exams at Masedi, had to face the most important final test of their school careers, without even the most basic support from the Provincial Department of Education. Candidates had to enter the exams after the Department failed to supply them with crucial prescribed books. Despite promises from the MEC and despite repeated fruitless pleas from the school, which culminated in a protest march to the offices of the local Area Manager, no books were forthcoming and teachers and learners were left to their own devices.

Apart from the lack of basic learning aids, the school was further handicapped by a lack of sufficient classroom space and a lack of electricity. The school's electric power supply was cut because the Department failed to pay the electric bill of this seriously disadvantaged school in a predominantly indigent community.

The primary section of the school had to introduce double sessions to accommodate the large number of pupils from the expanding population in Tshikota.

The secondary section of the school, which is managed with a separate principal, is forced to share the already inadequate classroom space of Masedi.

This crisis erupted, after the Department unilaterally pulled out of an historic initiative designed to timeously supply in the growing demand for school space in Louis Trichardt.

The local municipality, in an historic and farsighted decision, paved the way for a partnership between the local authority and the province, in the provision of school accommodation in Louis Trichardt.

The local council decided, now more than two years ago, to donate a serviced erf with sufficient space for a secondary school in Tshikota, and also provided for financial support in the erection of such a school. Funds for such a venture accumulated by annually setting apart a specific percentage of the municipal budget for educational needs. This fund is already approaching the million rand mark.

A combined committee with representatives of the Department and the Municipality agreed on the need and on the location of the new secondary school in Tshikota.

With plans for the erection of the much needed new secondary school in Tshikota well advanced, the Department unilaterally and without any explanation withdrew from the project, leaving education in Louis Trichardt in a severe unresolved crisis.