Parents clean filthy school

Thembinkosi Majikijela said learners are happy that their school’s yard is clean and that they can now engage in recreational activities

Parents, learners and teachers of Legae Primary School in Mangaung joined forces to clean the school yard that was in a terrible state to avoid health and environmental risks.

The parents at the school volunteered to clean the school yard when they became concerned about papers and plastics that were strewn all over the school ground as well long grass that had taken over the yard. The parents invited their kids over to clean the school with them.

On Saturday, parents, teachers and learners rolled up their sleeves and went to the school armed with gardening tools to clean the school. The school principal, Amos Mlonyeni, who started working at the school at the beginning of this year, said he was not impressed with the unhealthy environment at the school’s yard. He said the filthy environment affected effective learning and teaching.

Mlonyeni said the school governing body (SGB) has decided to set up a development fund where parents will be donating money to help the school meet its needs. Legae Primary School is a no fee school.

He said the school has only one person doing maintenance. The chairperson of the school governing body, Dimakatso Kotsie, told The Weekly a decision was taken at school parents meeting in February to take action against the environmental time bomb at the school’s yard.

“The tidiness of the school doesn’t rely on parents and teachers who are directly involved at school but the entire community. When the government construct a school its doing it for the community but when there is something wrong happening at the school the other parents who do not have kids at the school fold their hands,” said Kotsie.

Kotsie said the community needs to be more involved in school projects and take care of their schools. She said parents organised the first phase of the cleaning last weekend and will soon commence with the second phase.

A teacher at Legae Primary School, Mokhethi Matabola, said learners were excited to be part of the cleaning campaign.

Matabola said the Learner Representative council (LRC) made sure that gardening tools were not getting mixed during the cleaning process and that all parents went back home with their tools cleaned up.

The President of the LRC at the school, Thembinkosi Majikijela (17) said learners are happy that their school yard is clean and they can now engage in recreational activities. Kgomotso Moikabi (15), a grade 9 learner at the school, said the filth at the school was embarrassing the learners and affecting their academic performance. The school was built in 1952.

She said she came to clean the school because she wanted to make her parents and grandparents, who are former learners at the school, happy.