De Villiers Laerskool (Robertson)

Robertson. Home of wine farms, dust, and apparently one teacher trying to manage 33 kids at the same time. De Villiers Laerskool, where the government decided fees are free but forgot to also make teachers free, because bru, 30 educators for 988 learners is not a school, that is a stadium event. One teacher is basically doing a TED Talk to an entire matric dance venue every single morning. Thirty teachers. Nearly a thousand kids. You do the math, except the kids probably cannot because their maths teacher is currently teaching three grades simultaneously while also doing admin, making photocopies, and emotionally processing their life choices. A ratio of 32.9 to 1 means if one kid asks a question, the other 32 are just vibing, staring out the window at the Robertson mountains, wondering if the Huguenot Tunnel goes somewhere better. And look, no fees is genuinely lekker, we respect that, the parents are not selling a kidney every January. But the school cannot keep calling itself a learning institution when the teachers are outnumbered like they walked into a taxi rank and asked for exact change. Somewhere in Robertson there is a Grade 4 teacher who has not sat down since 2019. Overall verdict: De Villiers Laerskool is basically free childcare with a whiteboard, but somewhere in that chaos they are raising real kids with real grit, and honestly that teacher with 33 learners deserves a Nando's gift card and a long weekend.