A farm school nestled in the opulent suburbs of Cornwall Hill in Centurion shrugged off its Cinderella status when its learners took to the Internet space for the first time today.
Behind Irene Middle School learners` Internet experience is local resident Mandla Ngcobo, who is group executive for legal services at Telkom. Ngcobo today handed over a laboratory with 20 computers equipped with Internet connectivity and a printer. In the past, the school churned out farm workers as learners joined their parents after leaving school to eke out a living by toiling in the farms.
Thanks to Ngcobo`s helping hand, today`s learners will - in the words of school Principal Nic Pitse - "become entrepreneurs who will be able to create jobs for themselves and others".
Pitse said the computers would afford the learners an opportunity to learn skills which would make them relevant in the job market.
Irene Middle School now joins a network of schools adopted by members of Telkom management who use their time, skills and resources set aside for corporate social investment to plough back to the communities Telkom serves.
This is part of the Adopt-A-Project initiative run by the Telkom Foundation whose activities are targeted at education and training, especially in the fields of mathematics, science and technology - these being areas of strategic and economic importance for the country.
"This computer centre will give Irene Middle School learners a platform to develop their careers so that this country has a larger pool of technical graduates available to our economy," said Ngcobo.
He explained that, as telecommunications group, Telkom was at the forefront of efforts to narrow the infamous digital divide, using technology to build a strong knowledge economy for SA.
The school was founded in 1908 as the Dutch Reformed Mission School, and registered with education authorities 20 years later with an enrolment of 50 learners - many of whom were children of farm workers in Irene and the surrounding farms.
Though it is now a fully-fledged public school, boasting an enrolment of 578 learners from Grade R to 9, it is still registered as a farm school.
Its infrastructure and lack of teaching material continue to symbolise the inequalities of the past, and stand in sharp contrast with those of neighbouring schools like Cornwall Hill College and others.
But for parents who cannot afford the high cost of education, this school is the only place where they can send their children in the Centurion area.
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