Dongwe Combined Primary School
Dongwe Combined Primary School is a rural school in the Dongwe region of the Eastern Cape Province, close to Berlin. Dongwe region has inherited ongoing economic and social problems and in 2001 had an 80% employment rate.
The school comprises five classrooms and has 200 pupils. In addition to the DEEP project it has been involved in a teacher education programme run by READ Educational Trust, which develops and delivers a comprehensive language and literacy programme in the area. During the DEEP project teachers have taken the READ approach much further using computer technology. Pupils have even entered a story telling competition via the web, hosted by a university in the US.
Although Dongwe School is quite remote from any main roads, and has no telephone, it has become the lead cluster school for the DEEP schools in the area. In 2003 the DEEP teachers also chose Dongwe as the site for the project's affirmation ceremony. Children, school principals, governors and teachers from ten other DEEP schools travelled to Dongwe from all over the province. They presented what they had learned during the DEEP project to a crowd of over two hundred dignitaries and local villagers. (see http://www.open.ac.uk/deep/iau)
A huge marquee was erected beside the school and teachers and pupils displayed their work on a cinema screen, using computers and a projector powered by a ranger Motorycle (see http://www.eranger.com/).
At the ceremony a group of young Dongwe pupils told their parents the fable of the Fox and the Crow, accompanying it with this bilingual Powerpoint presentation, in which they use a mixture of Xhosa and English.
Download The Fox and the Crow (ppt 123kb)
