Albert Street School

Albert Street School

Today I visited the Albert Street School, a church-run school in Johannesburg’s CBD which provides primary and secondary education to hundreds of refugee children who cannot access South Africa’s public schools.  The school is funded almost entirely by donations – only those few families who can afford it pay fees – and when there is not enough money for both the matriculation exams and teachers’ salaries, teachers forego their earnings to ensure that senior students have the opportunity to graduate and to attend university.  The school was started only three and a half years ago by Johannesburg’s Central Methodist Church, and in 2011 it achieved a 97% pass rate in the ‘O level’ exams.

Nearly every person in Johannesburg I have spoken to about my research has told me about city’s Central Methodist Church.  Located in the heart of the city, the church has become famous as the home of literally thousands of Zimbabwean refugees.  At its height, the church housed over 3,000 people, in its offices, hallways and even stairwells.  Today it is still home to around 600 people.

Bishop Paul Verryn first began opening the church as a place to sleep in 2008, when Zimbabweans began turning up on his doorstep, destitute and with nowhere to sleep.  The influx of Zimbabweans into central Jo’burg was the combined effect of Operation Murambatsvina in Zimambwe – a government crackdown on slum areas which left around a million people without homes or livelihoods – and the widespread and brutal xenophobic attacks taking place around South Africa itself.  Many of the people who sheltered at the Central Methodist Church during this period have since found other accommodation, or moved on to other cities in South Africa in search of work, but many others remain.  Despite numerous attempts by authorities to close the church down – including a government raid in which around 300 people sleeping in and around the church were arrested – Paul Verryn maintains it is his Christian duty to provide shelter to those who have nowhere else to go.

As well as being a place of shelter, the community within the church has established its own governance structures – including weekly meetings to discuss issues and make decisions – and numerous organised activities, to help pass the time and develop skills and opportunities for inhabitants.  Chief among the challenges faced when this community was first established was what to do with the children.  Hundreds of young children – including many who arrived in South Africa without parents or a guardian – spent their days loitering in the church grounds, with energy to burn and nothing to do.

In response to the growing crisis, the Bishop decided to open a school.  The school is housed in a separate church building, in Albert St, also in the CBD and within easy walking distance of the church itself.  It is at best ironic that the Albert Street School is probably the most dangerous place I have been in Jo’burg.  Noone said as much, but my driver would not let me out of the locked car until he had been to check we were at the right place, and the teacher who greeted me in the walkway was quick to usher me inside and out of street view.  The building had previously been a school, which was closed in 1958, deemed a black spot in a white area.  When it was reopened in 2008 by the church, it had 17 students and 5 volunteer teachers.  By January 2009 there were 561 students and 21 teachers, who are now paid a very modest stipend, when there is enough money to pay them at all.

At law, asylum seeker and refugee children are entitled to public education in South Africa.  In practice, however, most cannot meet schools’ demands that they produce a birth certificate and transfer letter from their previous school before enrolling.  In addition, most public schools offer only the local matriculation certificate, which students must complete in a local language such as Afrikaans or Zulu.  The Albert St School offers the Cambridge Curriculum – O and A levels, as in the UK – which students complete in English.

The Albert Street School day is divided in two – in the morning, primary students attend from 7.30 am until midday, then from 12-4.30 the high school classes are run.  The principal, William Kandowe, explained to me the school’s concerns about the limited time available for high school classes.  He would like to begin them earlier, at 10am, and the school has two extra classrooms it can use – but they must wait until they can afford chairs to make these classrooms usable.  The lack of facilities at the school has already caused William enough headaches – the government recently threatened to close the school down unless they installed sufficient fire escapes and obtained a health certificate.  The school managed to do both, but the government is still threatening to withdraw its registration.

William attributes the constant harassment from government officials to the school’s success.  Their pass rate is well beyond any South African school, something the government views as a threat.  An offer of building space by a local businessman recently was quickly withdrawn when he was visited by officials who warned him not to proceed with the arrangement.  I have been told by others that Zimbabweans here are often better educated than South Africans, one reason they have been the target of such xenophobia.  When I visited the grade 4 classroom and was introduced to the students working diligently on their maths problems, I was told that today their teacher was away – she is sick and in hospital – and so the children must study unsupervised.  I could hardly hide my astonishment as I imagined what a class of 9 year olds would do at home if left to their own devices.

Accessing education is not the only difficulty faced by refugee students in South Africa.  Many of the children at Albert St School are ‘unaccompanied’ – meaning that they arrived without parents or a guardian.  For such children, the Church is the source not only of the child’s education, but also their clothing, food and access to health services.  A basic kitchen in the school serves lunch to the many students who travel into the school each day from Soweto, to the city’s south-west.  These children travel by train, an activity my Lonely Planet guide warns distinctly against.

While I spoke with William he had a steady stream of other visitors.  Three separate donations of textbooks arrived, a student’s mother came to collect a mobile phone which had been confiscated, a former student asked to be readmitted despite his past truancy, and students of all ages walked in and out collecting and delivering forms.  I asked William what the school needs most - he said school fees.  Most of school’s major donors disappeared as the 2008 ‘crisis’ abated, but the school still has more than 200 students who cannot afford to pay, and it is these fees that the school needs to pay for its bills, its teachers, and the students’ exams.

** More information on the school can be found at http://www.worldmissionspossible.org/albert_street_refugee_school__s_africa_0.aspx.  If you are interested in supporting the Albert Street School – through donations, by sponsoring a child’s school fees, or volunteering – please contact me and I will very gladly forward further details.  tamarajanewood@gmail.com  **

The building was formerly also a school, which was closed
down in 1958 for being a black school in a white area.

The kitchen where lunch is served for students who travel every
day from townships around Jo'burg to attend the school. The students
who live at the Central Methodist Church can walk home for their lunch.

The school's fire exit - built with the assistance of some large
donations in order to help the school to get its registration.



Albert Street School students



Albert Street School students

More students - some things are the same in schools everywhere!