Why a rural school’s matrics have staged a sleep-in

Staying on at school after class is usually a punishment for pupils — but not for a group from a dusty village in Mpumalanga who have forsaken their homes to camp out at their school to study intensively for matric.

When the matric exams start in three weeks, Emmanuel Mashaba and his classmates will be raring to go, having spent the past six weeks living at school so that they can study almost around the clock.

The 14 pupils, of Moses Mnisi High School in Acornhoek, sleep on a classroom floor and wash in a toilet block — all in an effort to get multiple distinctions.

They have been cramming for 22 hours a day, holding group discussions and helping each other with their studies. “The key is group discussions. If you don’t understand something, there’s always someone in the group to assist you,” says Mashaba.

But 500km away in Soweto, the matric class at Klipspruit West is less confident.

Learning at the school has been severely disrupted during the past term by racial protests over the appointment of black teachers at the predominantly coloured school.

The matric pupils have now been pulled out of the school. “We would have liked our teachers to teach us, or give revision classes, before we wrote our preliminary exams in September, but we didn’t have that,” said one pupil. “I wouldn’t be surprised if most children failed.”

Read the full story in the Sunday Times