Mlilo Comprehensive School (Piet Retief)

Mlilo Comprehensive School in Piet Retief, Mpumalanga. Piet Retief. Not Joburg, not Cape Town, not even Nelspruit. Piet Retief. The kind of town where the biggest event of the year is probably a tractor pulling competition and everyone knows everyone's business before they even know it themselves. But hey, at least you are not lost, because in Piet Retief there is basically one road and you cannot miss it. Now let us talk about this ratio. 1372 learners and 42 educators. That is 32.7 kids per teacher. Thirty. Two. Point. Seven. Your teacher is not teaching a class, they are managing a taxi rank. Full. Standing room only. That poor educator walks in on a Monday morning and it is basically peak hour at Noord Street. If you had a question in class you had to submit it in writing three weeks in advance and hope for the best. But here is the thing, 86.5% matric pass rate with those numbers is actually wild. That is not a school, that is a miracle. Those teachers are working harder than Eskom pretends to during load shedding, and somehow the kids are coming out the other side with results. You cannot fake that. Overall verdict: Mlilo is basically a sardine tin that somehow keeps producing gold, which means the school is a mess but the people inside it are built different.