The teachers assured him that it had always been that way at Balvenie Primary throughout its 60-year history. Professor Jansen said it was one of SA’s miracle schools where everything you see is counter-intuitive. “The school is not supposed to do well. It is in a high-crime area where gangsters sometimes lurk near the fence. As in so many township areas, parents with some money have long abandoned places like Balvenie Primary for the former white schools; those who stay have few options,” he said.
But his words on his social media feed resonated with John Matthews, Group CEO of Garden Cities, one of the Cape’s biggest and oldest residential developers. In 2003, Garden Cities established the Archway Foundation to provide historically under-resourced schools with halls, to help redress some of the huge lack of essential educational tools. A school with such a spirit as Balvenie Primary, Matthews thought, should get a hall.
And not just any hall - it was chosen to get the Archway’s 100th hall, handed over in the year that marks the centenary of Garden Cities, which was established in 1919.
“The choice of schools to receive the halls is advised by our recognition that the best use possible should be made of this resource which remains scarce, but we are also aware that the halls immeasurably enhance the status of the school in the eyes of the community. We believe Balvenie Primary meets the criteria,” he said.
Balvenie Primary’s successes are many, reflected in the achievements of its former pupils who speak highly of the influence the school had on their lives, says Principal Farieda Wakefield. The school has seen a couple of generations of the same families through its classrooms.
Wakefield has been Principal at Balvenie for just over a year, but previous posts in her 24-year career have always been at schools that do not have a hall, the lack of which she says, has a profound effect on the abilities of the school to cover all the aspects of a child’s broader education. This is an opinion shared with every educator one speaks to.
At Balvenie, conditions for the children in their homes where substance abuse is often rife, are challenging, and they come to school hungry, only able to be fed with limited school feeding allocations that have to be shared by too many to provide substantial portions.
The lack of fundamental necessities affects the wellbeing of the children, for whom a host of basic facilities that are taken for granted by more affluent communities, are simply missing.
Wakefield says that her next goal for her school, that has already made great strides to rise above its surroundings, is to acquire a school bus that could transport the children to sporting and cultural activities in the wider community.
The work of the foundation coincides with John Matthews’ dream while he was still at school, to redress where he could, the inequalities in school facilities. Shortly after he was appointed as CEO of Garden Cities, he increased his enormous corporate workload to include the realisation, with the ratification of the Garden Cities Board, of the Archway Foundation, that within 16 years has delivered 100 halls valued at well over R600 million.
As part of the new direction taken by the Board at the time, the funds for the Archway Foundation to provide the halls were voted from the earnings of Garden Cities, a non-profit company.
Prompted by the success of the project, the Western Cape Education Department eventually established a financial partnership to assist the foundation, and help speed up the delivery of the halls.
The Foundation also partners the University of the Western Cape’s school laboratory initiative, providing fully-equipped labs at schools that never before had such a facility.
To financially partner the Garden Cities Archway Foundation projects, corporations and individuals who share this determination to create a better education for children of the Western Cape, please call John Matthews on +27 (0)21 558 7181.
