Friends of Stockwell School
Friends of Stockwell School is a Not-For-Profit organisation that has been set up to help and sponsor Stockwell School, Ashton, Cape Province, South Africa.
Stockwell School is a farm school, which means that is its role is to educate children from outlying farms, so its catchment area is approximately 25 miles. It also draws children from the local township of Zoolani. A local farmer provides the school site but there is no agreement to provide running water; one of our first achievements was the funding of water collection tanks for flushing toilets. When we first went there in 2008 the children had no school transport and some of them had to walk 3-4 miles each way to get there, they achieved this because they know that education is the way out of poverty.
Being a farm school means that it gets a limited amount of state funding compared to other primary schools and farm schools are not subject to the class size requirement of larger, urban schools. Large class sizes of mixed-age children means that some children cannot make the progress they should, in spite of exceptionally hard-working staff and the school urgently needs an increase in the number of classroom educators, either teachers or teaching assistants. In 2008 there were only 60 pupils, by 2016 the numbers had risen to over 150, such is its draw.
We want to provide continuing financial support to see the school grow and develop further. In a recent teaching inspection Stockwell was complimented on their excellent use of finances and the connections they have with a Hertfordshire secondary school.
"Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world" - Nelson Mandela