“What does it mean to be a winner? There are three schools in the category that we are in. Any of the three schools, whoever doesn’t come first, they are all still winners because of the things that the schools have done to overcome adversity, to deal with problems in their societies. They have highlighted that to the rest of the world and they told the world this is how we are solving some of the issues to make this planet a better place for everybody.”
Shereen Stadler, deputy principal of Pinelands North Primary School (PNPS), shared these words with learners just minutes before the announcement of the category winner on Wednesday 19 October.
READ | ‘Now on to number one!’: School in Pinelands targets global recognition
The school was one of the Top Three finalists in the World’s Best School Prize for Overcoming Adversity, with the other two being Escola Evandro Ferreira Dos Santos in Brazil, and Project Shelter Wakadogo in Uganda.
And even though the top spot, announced via video link, went to Project Shelter Wakadogo, Stadler couldn’t have spoken truer words. Highlighting and addressing the great need for inclusive learning in South Africa, PNPS is indeed a winner.
Supporting children with different needs, the school’s capacity-building model ensures that teachers and teacher aides, in collaboration with various specialists, help children to learn more effectively.
“We believe that by including children and adults that are different, we all learn more. We, therefore, have enrolled children who find it hard to be included in most mainstream schools,” the school’s website reads.
PNPS is one of only 15 public primary schools in the country that are recognised for excellence in their inclusive approach to learning. As any parent with a child who doesn’t fit the public school mould will tell you, this isn’t nearly enough. Too often, the only option open to despairing parents are expensive private schools. Something that is unaffordable for most.
PNPS’s journey to becoming one of the country’s leading institutions when it comes to fostering inclusivity in education began in 1997 when Ann Morton took over the role of principal. She says it all happened very organically.
David White, who suffered a stroke at the age of one-and-a-half, was the first child with a learning difficulty to attend the school.
The stroke left him seriously learning delayed. Morton says when his mother enrolled him at PNPS in 1998, she did so with the idea that he would have fun, not necessarily learn anything. But he did learn and went on to pass his matric.
The first transgender child came to the school in 2005.
“All of them came here because a parent came looking for the right school. And, in each case, I was touched by the parent who was desperate. And in both these two cases, the families had been to lots of schools to try and see whether they could get the children in and no school was prepared to take the chance on them. That was when we said, ‘Okay, let’s try this’.
“The plan was that they came in and then we changed. So every time a new child came into school that had new learning difficulties, or challenges, we would change the whole school and the policies of the whole school to make it safer for everybody,” says Morton.
She explains that PNPS runs the same curriculum as any other public primary school.
“But we just make accommodations for children and that’s mainly in the way they learn. So we have lots of children who currently have facilitators. We employ parents to come to school with them. They come to school with an adult or they are with an adult some time of the day, so the adult can help them specifically in the classroom.”
In addition, there are teaching interns in the classes – adults employed by the school who help the learners and staff in the classroom.
“We give the children multiple opportunities to write their assessments. It’s not about trying to catch children doing things wrong in a test. It’s about creating a test that will test your knowledge.”
With so few public primary schools that allow for learners with different needs, PNPS’s admission policy makes provision for them being an applicant’s “closest appropriate primary school”.
“So if you live in Bellville, we might be your closest primary school. With special needs applications, the parents will phone the school before they apply or they will send us the application with a motivation letter that has all the details, psychological reports and all that kind of thing. And then my learning support person and I usually meet with that family beforehand, because we need to know what the needs of your child are.”
Morton says that every primary school is supposed to be a place where every child in the community is supposed to learn.
“The truth of the matter is that that’s not anywhere near that. Schools will phone us and say, ‘We’ve got a child that you need to take’. Meanwhile, every school is supposed to be doing what they can and learning those things as you go along. Every school should be providing for the local children to feel safe.
“Again, it’s not only for the special needs or the staff with special needs, it’s about any of us learning to cope with society.”
- For more information, visit pnps.co.za
