Amasango Career School’s battle to get better classrooms is on the edge of victory, after pushes to move the school to the much larger Benjamin Mahlasela school premises have been met with promising cooperation from the Department of Education (DOE).
Amasango Career School’s battle to get better classrooms is on the edge of victory, after pushes to move the school to the much larger Benjamin Mahlasela school premises have been met with promising cooperation from the Department of Education (DOE).
Amasango has around 130 pupils from seriously disadvantaged backgrounds, with only 10 classrooms between them. Since 2009, Amasango has wrangled with the Department of Education in legal battles to get better classrooms and services. Amasango operates off a subsidy from the Department of Education that is supplemented to a large degree by funding from the UK-based Friends of Amasango charity organisation, and is in dire need of suitable classrooms.
This is not the first time the school has tried to move. The same attempts were made last year, but failed after they were met with resistance by the local community. At the time, principal Jane Bradshaw believed it was due the stigma attached to the learners.
“We deal with a lot of problems of stigma. People think our boys are violent, or drug addicts and they don’t what them around,” she explained following last year’s blocking of the move.
Bradshaw has not started the celebrations yet, but is positive that the process will be successful. So far, the Department of Education’s District Office has confirmed that Amasango will occupy the former Benjamin Mahlasela buildings. The school is waiting for the relevant documents to be signed by the Provincial Minister of Education to ratify the decision.
The process, if successful, could see the school moved to its new home within a month.
