WATCH | This Joburg school has a slide for pupils to get from class to class

A southern Johannesburg school has become the toast of teenagers countrywide.

Abbotts College recently unveiled a giant slide to make moving from class to class easier. It runs from the school's first floor to its piazza below.

The slide is a huge hit with pupils and videos of them living their best lives on it have been shared across social media.

Speaking to TimesLIVE this week, principal Colin Northmore said: “We are trying to be a school where children succeed and, in doing so, have fun. There is a complete fun element to it. The whole idea of going to class and then having to drag myself to the next one can be difficult, but it doesn't have to be.”

He said as much as it was “fun and relaxing”, there was an educational reason for the apparatus.

“We are going to be doing our gravity and friction experiments on it. There is a real educational purpose and value to it. We also use drones in some of our classes to teach bearing, momentum and other physics lessons. Our lockers also don't have numbers, but elements of the periodic table.”

Responding to criticism that it might distract pupils from learning, Northmore said there was room for fun in education.

“When we are in class, we are in class. How much learning is happening as children are in the corridor changing from one class to the next? All of these are critical to our environment of learning by making it fun.”