Financial Inclusion Matters too

 “PNPS is very different to the schools I worked at before: we didn’t have parents supporting other parents”, says Crystal, her eyes moist, as she explained what she, as PNPS bursar, has witnessed.

She goes on: “Here we even have ex-PNPS pupils giving donations for current children’s school fees. I never heard of that in previous schools.”

We were sitting in the library, myself with Crystal and Tania (PNPS Business Manager), as I was seeking to understand what financial inclusion looks like at PNPS. Certainly, reading the dry budget figures hasn’t allowed me to grasp the culture of sharing that seems to permeate the PNPS parent and staff community. It turns out that there are multiple layers of sharing happening at our school.

About 10 years ago all Early Act fundraising went to charities. However, staff realised that there was significant need amongst the school families, and decided to allocate 20% of the Early Act income towards caring for the PNPS children. This is now known as the “Inhouse Early Act Fund” which helps to buy shoes, school bags and stationery for families going through a rough time. One year it helped purchase a birthday gift for a child where the family was under real financial strain. The fund also supports staff members in need: from providing refreshments for one staff member’s husband’s funeral to accessing emergency medical treatment for a staff member who arrived at work just having been stabbed.

Crystal explains that this ethos of being mindful of one another’s needs is also reflected in the sharing between parents and families. Prior to the Solidarity Fund, Tania reports that there were children whose school fees were being paid for by other people. Each of these situations was different: sometimes there was an agreement between two families, other times it was through anonymous giving. Tania helps facilitate these sharing relationships and care is taken to ensure that the child or the family are not made to feel like recipients of charity, but that their dignity is honoured.

Our COVID response did enable ongoing learning

How does a heart manage to swell with joy and crack with sorrow at the same time? That happened to me during our most recent SGB meeting as Shereen Stadler reported back on the outcomes of the Systemic Tests.

Shereen explained that Systemic Tests are a diagnostic test by the Western Cape Dept. of Education to measure the strengths and challenges of the education system, not of any individual child.  

These are usually held every year, but 2020 was skipped due to the COVID pandemic. Shereen presented to the SGB the grade 3 and 6 results for 2019 and 2021 – with comparisons against the average in the province, and also other quintile 5 schools¹.

What we saw is that our PNPS children’s performance in 2021 was almost the same as 2019, only a few percentage points lower. This is despite that horrendous six-week house-bound lockdown, despite missing multiple days for months, despite the anxiety, stress, loss and chaos. Do you remember that time? For some of us it was very strange but bearable, for others it was just a nightmare.  

And yet the PNPS performance shows that somehow the foundations for learning remained firm, allowing our children to continue their education. What made this possible? It was the coming together of every aspect of our school that made it possible:

The School Management Team (SMT), supported by the School Governing Body (SGB), created and recreated various strategies to keep education happening, whilst still social distancing; holding the teaching staff together with care and vision, even as some staff were being stretched to their limit.

The SGB started a Solidarity Fund to ease the financial burden experienced by many families as the lockdown impacted livelihoods. With reduced school income the SGB had to manage finances very carefully to ensure salaries could be paid.

The teaching staff’s “out the box” thinking about how to support the children, through new technologies, learning from what didn’t work and trying another way, all whilst working from home with their own families under stress. Remember the Google Classrooms, the drive-through to collect books, the Zoom chats, rearranging literally every inch of the school to become a learning space?

The Learning Support Team were daily on the look-out for “wobbly feelings”, ready to provide individual and group emotional support.

The school maintenance staff transitioned into a super safety-and-sanitising team.

The parents who, holding their own anxiety, also found ways to hold their children’s uncertainty, who stepped into the “no-one could prepare you for this” role of pandemic-home-schooling. Remember having to “make a plan” about your children being home for two or three days a week whilst we had to work? Remember parents volunteering to help with traffic control and playground supervision?

Last, but not least, our children rooted themselves into the good soil of the community that surrounded them and they grew despite it all.

Many feared that our children had “lost part of their education”. These Systemic Test results show that this is not true. And this is truly remarkable. 

And yet, we know that our school has resources that so many other schools don’t have. The percentage difference between PNPS and the average for the province is too large and too heart-breaking to mention, but it is not surprising given how under-resourced the majority of the schools are in our province, in our country. So, we sit soberly as we reflect on what these Systemic Test results show us: that we are a deeply unequal society, and our current education system is maintaining (rather than undoing) this unsustainable and unjust disparity.

This moment, therefore, invites us to gratitude: may we not take for granted what we have here at PNPS. The SGB asked Ann to extend a message of deep appreciation to all the staff for how they held our children during the past two years. May I, on behalf of the SGB, extend deep appreciation to the parents of PNPS for the many ways you supported and partnered the school.

This moment also invites us to be mindful of the privileges that we have, and the responsibility this gives us to find creative ways to share our resources and to extend our inclusive ethos to those who are excluded by our education system.

-----------------------------------------

Written by Jacqui Tooke, SGB parent with 2 children currently at the school, and an older child who used to attend PNPS. 

---

[1] All South African public ordinary schools are categorised into five groups, called quintiles, largely for purposes of the allocation of financial resources. Quintile 1 is the 'poorest' quintile, while quintile 5 is the 'least poor'. These poverty rankings are determined nationally according to the poverty of the community around the school, as well as certain infrastructural factors. Schools in quintile 1, 2 and 3 have been declared no-fee schools, while schools in quintiles 4 and 5 are fee-paying schools. For more information: https://wcedonline.westerncape.gov.za/comms/press/2013/74_14oct.html

Becoming Accessible

“It’s the unlocked but closed door that she worries about the most.” Parent, Leigh Berg, is explaining her daughter’s mental preparation for moving around the school in a wheelchair. I hadn’t thought about it before, but when sitting in a wheelchair, turning knobbed door handles is near impossible. An unlocked, but closed door efficiently shuts down her daughter’s independence and literally stops her in her tracks. 

At School-in-Action Day many of us parents encountered children in wheelchairs, problem-solving everyday moments from how to find a reachable writing surface whilst in the wheelchair, to how to get out to the field for lunch. Some of us parents might have received interesting snippets from our own children about what it was like to spend an hour in a wheelchair.

Adapting to a wheelchair

I was eager to find out what school life is like for children who use wheelchairs fulltime. Leigh agreed to share her reflections about her daughter’s experience at PNPS. Her daughter, Sarah-Hope, was born with a feisty spirit, a bright mind, and a body that requires much problem-solving whilst living in a world built for humans with working limbs. Sarah-Hope’s arms have not developed, so her well-functioning hands grow from her shoulders. Her legs and feet have proven amazingly adaptive to take on many arm/hand functions, but their structure has also made walking on feet a challenge. Again, with determined adaptability, Sarah-Hope became an adept knee-walker.

We are heard. We are valued. We are included.

Many voices

As you walk through the corridors of PNPS, you might hear many voices. You might hear a teacher singing a song signalling that it is time for the class to line up; you might hear children laughing and chattering as they walk to break; you might hear a greeting called between two parents; or you might hear the ducks quacking or the rooster crowing. But there is a difference between hearing the sounds of the various members of a school community and their voices really being included and heard in a school.

Including language includes people

I was not expecting her tears, in fact, I admit, I was a little taken aback. However, I could see that these were not sad tears. Rather, though there had been sadness, now something else was birthing these tears. It was the emotion due to being acknowledged, being heard and being honoured. I was meeting with Nomamela Sijila, the PNPS isiXhosa teacher, to find out more about how isiXhosa had been included in this year’s poetry competition, and her tears were not for herself, but rather they were her response to the inclusion of her mother tongue.

Nelson Mandela said, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart”. As Nomamela explained the gradual embracing of isiXhosa by PNPS, I came to see how this wasn’t just a journey about the academic learning of a language, but this was a journey of the recognition of a culture and a people into the school space.

Gender equality works for all our children

“You’ve heard the story of Dr James Barry, haven’t you?” asked Ann enthusiastically, whilst explaining the various ways teachers can create opportunities for children to engage with the idea of gender equality. I had to confess to Ann that I had not but made a mental note to read up about it.

I am glad I did as it is a most remarkable story about a young Irish woman who pretended to be a man so that she could study medicine. This took place in the early 1800s when only males could enter the medical profession. She graduated as a doctor and went on to serve as a military surgeon in South Africa and other parts of the world. Wikipedia explains that she “not only improved conditions for wounded soldiers, but also the conditions of the native inhabitants, and performed the first Caesarean section in Africa by an Irish surgeon in which both the mother and child survived the operation”. She rose to the rank of Inspector General before retiring. It was only after her death that it was revealed that she was in fact a woman.

Gender equality at PNPS

Ann explains that stories like this provide a starting point for conversations with children about whether one’s gender should in any way dictate what you may achieve. The absurdity of Dr Barry’s story also motivates Ann to ensure that no child at PNPS is in any way limited by the straitjacket of gender stereotypes.

Building bridges through building friendship

Ann’s eyes were vibrant as she told us how Uncle Sakkie had rushed from the car, come straight to find her, put his hands on her shoulders, while struggling to find the words to express his overflowing enthusiasm. Uncle Sakkie had just returned from the Grade 7’s Mandela Day visit to Klipfontein Primary School and he was so moved by the way the Grade 7s had behaved during the outing. I was intrigued to find out what had touched Uncle Sakkie to such a degree.

This incident happened, serendipitously, during the early birthing phase of the “Inclusion Matters at PNPS”. Our children are exposed to many intentional incidences of inclusion that we parents understand only in vague terms. Through “Inclusion Matters at PNPS” we hope to give parents tasters of the inclusion meal our children are having at school. Uncle Sakkie’s story is a good place to start as it highlights multiple layers of inclusion in action.

Sakkie Louw has worked as a cleaner at PNPS for 19 years. The children call him Uncle Sakkie which speaks to the way he interacts with them as he goes about his duties. I asked Uncle Sakkie about the visit to Klipfontein Primary. He told me how he was amazed at this school’s maintenance and cleanliness in spite of it being in an impoverished area, and he was blown away by the confidence of the little grade Rs who live in challenging circumstances. But he did not seem surprised at being included in the Mandela Day visit. Many other parts of our society view cleaning staff as one dimensional and therefore to serve their job description only, but Uncle Sakkie is used to being included at PNPS. Did you know that staff events include all staff, not just teachers? And that the staff room is literally for all staff, not just the teachers. Inclusion means that Uncle Sakkie knows that he can find the principal, tell her what is on his heart, and know that he will be heard.