Roseview Primary School (Nigel)

Roseview Primary in Nigel, Gauteng. Nigel. Not Johannesburg, not Pretoria, not even Vereeniging. Nigel. The kind of place where the biggest news this week is that the Spar got a new till open. But okay, we see you Nigel, we see you. Now this school has 1642 learners and 48 teachers. Forty. Eight. That is a ratio of 34 kids per teacher, which means your teacher was not teaching you, she was managing a small riot with a whiteboard marker. You did not have a classroom, you had a stadium. You did not put your hand up to ask a question, you waited your turn like you were in a Home Affairs queue. By the time she got to you the bell had already rung and she had already forgotten your name. The one thing I will say is this is a no-fee school, so at least nobody's parents were crying at the kitchen table over a school fees invoice. No R50,000-a-year nonsense, no "structured payment plan" that sounds like a home loan. Free. Government funded. Which also explains the 34 to 1 ratio because the WCED, or whoever runs Gauteng schools, said "here's some chalk, good luck, jy weet hoe is dit." Overall verdict: Roseview Primary is basically a people festival with a curriculum attached, but those kids came out tough and that counts for something.