About our Project

School performance 

• The school currently has a pass rate of 9%. 5 
• The school had a 9% dropout rate and is losing 30 learners a year 
• Approximately 70 new learners are joining the school each year  

Challenges identified at the school include: 

• Teacher morale at the school is very low. The school is currently understaffed, the teachers are underpaid, overworked and not happy with the living and working conditions at the school.  
• Learners are not receiving enough focused and quality learning time at school. learners are sharing  
• classrooms, learning materials and teachers with other learners and grades which results in not enough focused attention and investment being provided to each grade 
• The school is currently a satellite school to the Mola Primary school, which means that the school is not registered as an independent school. This impacts the school’s ability to access grant funding from the government and to register as an examination centre which would allow grade 7 learners to write exams at their school.  
• Most learners walk more than 5KMs daily to school, most of whom cross the river to get to school. This is a challenge for learners during the rainy season when the river floods and is difficult to cross through. This will result in learners missing days of school and or exams 
• Due to a shortage of classrooms, ECD A/B and grade 1-2 learners are currently learning outside under an open thatched structure. These are bad learning conditions especially when it is very hot and humid or when it is raining and cold  
• The Mola community is along the border of the national park and lions often roam into the community looking for food, especially during winter. This puts learners at risk when they are travelling to and from school. In the winter months, there are more lions and predators in the area on the hunt for food and learners are at risk of being attacked while travelling to school. 

Our long-term goal for the school and the impact we want to have 

We aim to address the challenges identified at Mangwara school in three phases:   

Phase 1: 0-18 months  

• Improving school facilities: additional solar, installing a borehole at the school, completing the water supply to ablution blocks, building additional classroom blocks, installing Wi-Fi and network, and fencing the school.  
• Improving teacher accommodation: fixing the current accommodation, building bathrooms and toilets, renovating the kitchen and rooms.  
• Improving learner performance and attendance: resourcing of learning materials books and textbooks, printers for the school, cabinets, and shelving 
• Human-wildlife co-existence awareness and safety at the school  

Phase 2: 18-36 months  

• Teachers: Improving morale (knock-on effect from addressing phase 1) 
• Teachers: support and develop existing and new teachers at and for the school 
• Teacher salaries  
• Learners: Focused and quality learning and education (increasing resourcing at the school) 
• Governance: getting the school registered as a school and examination centre would allow the school to be more independent and allow learners to write exams at the school. 

Phase 3: 36-54 months  

• Supplementary programs: Initiatives and programs to support and assist the school to be more self-sustaining   

Impact measurement and tracking  

• Teachers, learners, and infrastructure   
• Change/improvements in teacher morale (are teachers happy, are they staying, are they motivated) 
• Teacher performance and retention at the school (number of teachers joining and leaving, quality of teaching, training, development, and growth) 
• Improvements made to school and accommodation (borehole, solar, classrooms, accommodation, garden etc.) 
• Learner performance (increase pass and progress rate, reduction in dropouts) 
• Feeding scheme (number of meals provided, improvement in school attendance and performance) 
• Sustainability at the school (ownership of school resources, supplementation programs to generate economic activity at the school and how they are progressing etc.)