Eduplex Combined School (Pretoria)

Eduplex Combined School in Queenswood, Pretoria. First of all, "Eduplex" sounds like a brand of multivitamins you buy at Dis-Chem when you can not afford the real thing. Or maybe it is a shopping complex that also does homework. The name is giving very much "we wanted to be a proper school but the budget said strip mall." Queenswood is a solid area though, we will give them that, sitting there between the suburbs like they are trying to figure out if they are north or south of the action. Now listen, 389 learners and 35 teachers, that is an 11 to 1 ratio, which honestly sounds amazing until you realise that with that many teachers watching that few kids, there is nowhere to hide. You can not copy in that school. You can not sneak to the tuck shop. Someone is always watching. Forget a naughty teacher, there are basically enough teachers for each one to adopt three learners personally and follow them home. The school's own description says they are "privately funded and do not offer boarding facilities," which is the most polite way of saying "you are paying private school money but you are going home every day, no exceptions, no lodge, no dining hall, just the N1 and your own problems." The description is so dry it makes a Pretoria summer feel humid. Overall verdict: Eduplex is a school that takes itself seriously, probably has genuinely decent teachers, and absolutely named itself during a PowerPoint presentation that ran too long.