Continous growth for Charles Andersson

Festus Imalwa, principal of Charles Andersson School in Ongwediva has been in the education sector for 37 years. The school was established in 1999 and is named after a Swedish explorer, trader and environmentalist, Charles Andersson who lived in Namibia in the 1880s and is buried in northern Namibia.

The school was a donation from the Swedish government after the independence of Namibia. He started out at the school in 2009 as they just adapted the grade 8 curriculum. “After the grade 10 curriculum at the school was approved, we wrote the first national grade 10 examinations in 2011 and we became the top performing in the whole of Oshana region and the following year, we had 100% pass rate and it has been good results thus far,” says Imalwa. The school currently offers grades from 1 to 9 since the new curriculum has come into effect.

“The school is well kept in terms of performance, the learners and the teachers. The vision of the school is “together, we achieve our goals” and the aim is to produce quality learners who will be able to thrive in any environment.”

The school has an upcoming entrepreneurship day and according to Imalwa, the learners use the platform to showcase their business skills and apply what they were taught in entrepreneurship as a school subject. “The parents support it as well and we have a huge support coming the business community as well,” he says.

Discipline is key

Imalwa says discipline is taken very seriously and they aim more in preventing disciplinary actions. “Children follow a very tight schedule and they do not have time to sneak out and cause serious problems. Things still do happen and we always conduct thorough investigations to ensure they are not any underlying issues. Punishments such as detention are not meant to hurt the child, but rather discipline them,” he says.

Carlo Msati-Fransisku, the life skills teacher of the school says bullying has been one of the cases the school has experiences and resolving it at school is the first step. “We have realised that most parents struggle to speak to their adolescents and we also have therapy sessions instead of reprimanding them,” says Msati-Fransisku.

“We also make sure we cater for children from disadvantaged backgrounds by providing them with school uniforms through donors and also offer counselling to find about their upbringing and their home environment,” she says.

The school offers social clubs such as Window of Hope and other sport clubs as well.

Leadership of the school

The head boy, Inotila Sheehama and head girl, Ndayola Mulongeni say the school environment has played a huge role in shaping them into their leadership roles. “It has definitely improved my speaking skills and I enjoy interacting with the learners,” says Sheehama.

Mulongeni says this year was the first time that the LRCs started sitting in during school board meetings and she is happy the learners are well-presented. She however struggled in her role in the beginning as she was trying to please everyone. “Sometimes the school would come up with policies that the learners are not happy with, but at the same time, you also want to make your learners happy,” she says.

The two say the school has continued grow since their start and are excited for the future of the school.