St James Primary School
St James Primary School is situated at the end of the mission, furthest from the main entrance. The primary school consists of a group of buildings including the original St James Church and three rows of low rendered and white washed brick built schoolrooms. The pre-school is also here, occupying one of the classrooms at the end of one block.
The school rooms are rustic, and basic but the teaching staff do their best with the limited resources they have. All the children live locally and so virtually all of them have parents who live subsistence farming lives with very limited employment and opportunity. Education is profoundly linked to better opportunities and futures.
Margaret Sibanda, a school alumnus, graduated at the end of 2019 with a degree in Early Years Learning and she heads up the pre-school as well as doing some teaching in the lower years of the school.
The school rooms are rustic, and basic but the teaching staff do their best with the limited resources they have. All the children live locally and so virtually all of them have parents who live subsistence farming lives with very limited employment and opportunity. Education is profoundly linked to better opportunities and futures.
Margaret Sibanda, a school alumnus, graduated at the end of 2019 with a degree in Early Years Learning and she heads up the pre-school as well as doing some teaching in the lower years of the school.
Primary School Lunches
It is worth noting that day schools in Zimbabwe do not provide lunch for their children, but for many years St James has been funding a daily cooked lunch, and it has had a significant impact on the general health of the children. Cases of malnutrition are now rare rather than common and attendance in school is much greater than it once was.
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Set slightly aside from the classrooms is a small shelter with low walls and a tin roof that is the school kitchen! Two local ladies on a rota cook the school lunch every day during term time. The children collect their food in class groups, and return to their classrooms to eat.
Most lunches consist of sadza (thick maize meal porridge) with either beans or soya bean chunks and a packet soup to add some seasoning to the meal. The cost of this is now around £9,000 per year, or just over £1 per child per week. Could you support a child’s lunch? A regular takeaway coffee is the cost of lunch for three weeks for a child. |
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