Khanya Senior Secondary School (Mount Fletcher)

Khanya Senior Secondary School in Mount Fletcher, Eastern Cape. Mount Fletcher. Broe, even the name sounds like somewhere Google Maps gives up and just says "you are on your own from here." The Eastern Cape has been carrying South Africa's struggle history on its back for decades, and somehow the government said "dankie, here is a 33 to 1 learner ratio as a reward." One teacher. Thirty three kids. That is not a classroom, that is a taxi rank with a whiteboard. Twenty nine educators for 968 learners, and someone somewhere in an office approved that and went home for the weekend. You know how it is, jy weet hoe is dit. Those teachers are not teachers anymore, they are crowd control specialists with a qualification. Load shedding hits and now you have got 33 teenagers in the dark with one person who has already emotionally checked out by Wednesday. And then the matric pass rate sitting at 66.3 percent. Two out of every three kids cross the line, which is actually remarkable when you think about what those kids and teachers are working with out there in Mount Fletcher with basically nothing. That is not a failure, that is honestly a kind of stubbornness that the Eastern Cape is famous for. Overall verdict: Khanya means "light" and somehow these kids and teachers are keeping it on despite the government turning the power off on them in every possible way, respect where it is due.