‘Selling hope’ to pupils at new Perivale School

Perivale Primary School management is opening its doors to the broader community after the unveiling of the new school building on Thursday October 13.

The new state-of-the-art R86 million building replaced the old and dilapidated structure and will give opportunity for hundreds of new pupils to enrol because the school’s capacity has increased from 720 to 1240.

Principal Zaahier Jacobs encouraged parents to enrol their children: “We are overjoyed and can’t wait to increase the learner enrolment and to welcome learners from as far as Lotus River, Parkwood, Ottery and Pelican Park.”

Mr Jacobs said the old building required serious infrastructure intervention and the best option was to replace it so construction of the new school started in the beginning of 2020. Despite several delays due to the Covid-19 pandemic staff and pupils were finally able to start moving in earlier this month.

The school has 38 classrooms, a science lab, a resource centre, library, a computer centre, a school hall and multi-purpose soccer and rugby fields where the old school building was situated.

“It is an amazing experience to be part of the prolific experience of creating infrastructural spaces for learners of the community.

“Our main role as educators is to sell hope to our learners and now with the new state-of-the-art facilities we can sell hope to our learners with dignity and the new building is helping with learner and teacher motivation and learner attendance because many learners now come to school at 7am whereas in the past we used to struggle with late coming,” said Mr Jacobs.

He added that the building also significantly contributed to an improvement in the performance of pupils and staff morale

Education MEC David Maynier said the building is a major investment in the children of Lotus River and their future learning. He said the WCED aims to spend R830 million more on infrastructure in public ordinary schools this year.

“We are looking forward to celebrating with other communities as we expand the number of places in our schools, and improve the quality of their learning environment. We appeal to all communities to support this important work, so that together we can ensure that we provide quality education to every learner, in every classroom, in every school in the Western Cape.”

The school will have an open day in November but no date has been set. The new building’s phone lines have not been activated so to find out more visit the school in First Avenue, Lotus River.