Despite gang wars, widespread drug and alcohol abuse, and the effects of high unemployment and poverty seeping into lives of children, teachers at Coronationville Secondary School in Johannesburg aren’t deterred from ensuring they deliver a basic human right — education.
Principal Floyd Billings grew up in the equally troubled suburb of Westbury — a stone’s throw away from Coronationville and Slovo Park — which all share the same socioeconomic problems.
Billings has been the principal for five years and before that served as a teacher at the same school for 24 years. The school is sandwiched between two informal settlements and lies opposite a block of flats where unemployed youths sit around, some cradling babies. Outside the school, a young boy sat against the palisade fencing — an abandoned, silver hookah pipe a few metres away from him.
Coronationville lies in an underdeveloped and gloomy neighbourhood, but Billings says it doesn’t have to be the same outlook for the hundreds of schoolchildren who step through the school gates each day.
Over the years, he has seen and experienced it all.
Earlier that morning, he dealt with pupils embroiled in gang wars emanating from the two nearby informal settlements. On another occasion, he was forced to confront an apparent drug dealer who had for several days conducted his business outside the school gates.
“I confronted him and he said to me: ‘Hey, ou toppie, can you not see you are disturbing my job?’” said Billings. A few police patrols later and the suspected dealer was moved, but Billings said while the school serviced scores of the community’s children, it was not spared from the wrath of criminal activity.
Between 2019 and 2020, just before the Covid-19 hard lockdown, the school recorded more than 60 break-ins — at times experiencing two a day.
That put children who were already at a social disadvantage on an uneven playing field compared with those at more prestigious schools in the city, said Billings.
“We had smart boards installed by the education department, but because they stole the cables out of the roof, we cannot use them,” he said.
From stealing trophies out of the school windows and food meant for the feeding scheme, to stealing piping in the school toilets or even the zinc sheets that form part of the school carports, Billings said the school was seen as a soft target for many who were hoping to make a quick buck.
“Two years ago, a colleague’s car was stolen from the premises. This was after the gate had a problem and the department had taken time to respond to our requests to have it fixed. So for us, you leave not knowing what will happen that day,” said Doris Tlou, an economics teacher at the school.
A suspected thief was caught last year inside one of the school classrooms after he fell through the ceiling, breaking his leg. Billings said the man, who had been taken to hospital under police guard, was caught on the school premises a few weeks later — still on crutches — again trying to break into the school.
Tlou insisted the crime-ridden environment was not motivation enough for her to move.
“I don’t think of moving at all. I will retire teaching at the school. It’s a home even though there are challenges. Because of the environment, we are risking ourselves each day, but this is a calling for us, and we are protected by the God we pray to,” Tlou added.
“Historical factors come into play. If I look at this area, there is no development happening, so it means the area becomes more dense, and the denser it becomes, the more crime,” Billings said.
“But we try to teach our children that there’s no difference from a learner from Corrie and any other school, especially once they receive that matric paper which has the results,” he added.
It seems the message is reaching home.
Over the past five years, the school has recorded matric pass rates of between 73% and 98%. Last year, when the schooling calendar was affected by Covid-19, the school recorded a pass rate of 75.9%. Despite the decline in the pass rate compared with other years, there was an increase in bachelor and diploma passes.
With all the hurdles and disadvantages faced by staff, the teachers have an unwavering willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty. One of those teachers is Sinakile Ndlovu, who teaches mathematics.
On Friday afternoons, he gives extra lessons to his pupils. On Saturdays, he and seven other teachers who also teach matric head out to schools in Soweto and Langlaagte, where they give lessons to pupils from other schools in subjects where their own pupils have excelled.
The teachers get paid a small stipend for this, but these teachers insist that this is not the big reward.
“It’s not about the money. It’s my part in helping the community. Seeing my learners get good results is my incentive,” said Tlou.
“I believe God placed us here to change lives. I would not want to be at a place where I am not challenged, where I am not changing and affecting lives like I am here,” Ndlovu added.
He has taught at more than 20 schools since he started giving Saturday classes 13 years ago, and thousands of pupils have passed through his hands.
“Some of them have gone on to university, while others are doctors. So I don’t mind giving of all my time to even one pupil, because that pupil may go on to be a doctor who will serve and save many lives,” Ndlovu said.
For him, and many of the other teachers at the school, they believe they are reshaping and rebuilding Coronationville one child at a time.
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