By Mantoe Phakathi
BULEMBU, Swaziland, Sep 17 2009 (IPS)

It is not a typical classroom setup where pupils sit in rows facing the front with a teacher lecturing before them.

Orphans and vulnerable children have the opportunity to make up for lost time at Bulembu Christian Academy. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

“This is a unique system of education which was started in the United States of America,” explained Bulembu Christian Academy (BCA) principal Jon Skinner. “It was a curriculum that was initially designed for home schooling 30 years ago but many schools all over the world later fell in love with it.”

Currently 200 schools across Africa use the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE), an individualistic approach to education and BCA, a missionary school run by Bulembu Ministries Swaziland (BMS) in north-eastern Swaziland, finds it ideal because they operate in an environment where many children have missed a number of school years.

The majority of the pupils who attend BCA are orphans and vulnerable children who are being taken care of by the Bulembu Ministries Swaziland (BMS) under the community care programme. BMS gets these orphans from the Swazi department of social welfare at Pigg’s Peak but government does not pay anything to BMS towards the children’s maintenance.

Some of the pupils are BMS employees’ children and those of residents from surrounding communities.

“The fees are subsidised through donations from overseas,” said Skinner. “We also provide a school feeding programme.”

Hlatshwayo is a grade six pupil who was enrolled into this system last year after she dropped out of the nearby government primary school. Her father had passed away and her mother, who is a carer at ABC Ministries (an orphanage for abandoned babies at Bulembu), could not afford the $40 annual school fees.

A pupil her age is supposed to be at least in grade seven. She was able to catch up within two years.

“I’m about to finish my grade six module I’ll be starting on my grade seven studies soon,” said Angel excitedly.

She was quick to add that what she likes most about her new school is that corporal punishment is not in full force, unlike her previous school where pupils are beaten for anything from late coming, failing tests or for just talking in class.

“Here we’re forced to face the wall for 30 minutes after school if we misbehave,” said Angel with a mischievous smile. “But Mr Skinner spanks others if their misbehaviour becomes too much.”

Skinner said he only gives a few strokes to the younger ones once in a while but he does not touch the teenagers.

“Teenagers tend to be rebellious if you beat them but I spank the younger ones to keep them on track,” said Skinner.

Skinner said the pupils are categorised according to their age groups and not the grade levels they are doing. For instance, a 13-year-old child doing grade one is not put in the same classroom with six year-olds. Instead such a child would be in the same class with pupils of the same age group who are doing different grades.

“Putting older kids with younger ones is disruptive,” said Skinner.

Each one of the pupils has their own work plan. The study materials are modules designed according to the national curriculum for each grade level. While other pupils in the same classroom are reading, others are writing or are part of the group outside doing extramural activities.

“As you can see, each child works from their individual offices (cubicles) and raises a flag whenever they want assistance,” Skinner told IPS.

Two people facilitate the learning process – a supervisor and a monitor. The supervisor, according to Skinner, is a qualified teacher who attends to the academic needs of the pupils while the monitor concentrates on the non-academic matters such as asking for permission to go to the bathroom. Rather than teaching, the ACE curriculum encourages mentoring.

“The maximum number of pupils in each classroom is 20 so that each child can receive maximum attention from either the supervisor or monitor,” said Skinner.

Under this curriculum there is no failure – there is no end-of-year examination because the students are tested on each module during the course of the year.

The school started operating in 2008, and there are now 188 pupils at the school from grade one to twelve.

“Our curriculum is two years advanced than the national curriculum used in Swaziland. This then gives our students advantage to enrol in South African tertiary institutions because Swazi students with the IGCSE programme are not admitted in South African institutions,” said Skinner.

The ACE curriculum has been praised by the Ministry of Education and Training because, instead of a teacher spoon feeding the class and expecting the pupils to regurgitate the information during examination. Principal Secretary Pat Muir said pupils are empowered to educate themselves

“Although this is not a common curriculum in Swaziland, my assessment of it is that it is a good programme,” said Muir. “There might be something we could learn from such schools because the government is also concerned about quality education.”

However, BMS general manager Andrew Le Roux said ACE is a very expensive system to run in terms of personnel and infrastructure.

“The fact that this programme operates on a student to teacher ratio of 1:10 means that it would cost you more money because you need more teachers and classrooms,” said Le Roux.

On the other had, Taurai Takarasima, a teacher at the school said what he liked about this programme was that the learning process involved the teacher to a greater degree compared to the traditional “chalk and talk” method. Takarasima, who has been a teacher in Zimbabwe for many years, said it would however be a good idea to mix the two methods.

“The ACE method limits the pupils to one-word answers unlike the traditional method which encourages them to express themselves in essays,” said Takarasima.

He said because the pupils are working on their own most of the time under the ACE programme which is why the subjective questions are asked as opposed to the traditional method which uses both subjective and objective questions.

Another challenge BCA faces is that qualified Swazi teachers are not interested in working at the school because the salaries are quite lower than those paid by government.

“We’re a charity organisation and we pay half the salaries paid by government and we mostly attract foreign teachers because government does not hire them,” said Skinner.

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