The 2025 Chronicle

MICHAELHOUSE COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP TRUST

IMPACT OUR VISION: “To enable every school leaver to fulfil his/her po tential, having had a holistic education from the age of 2 to 18 years old.” Over the past year our mission has continued to focus relentless ly on our five pillars: school principal leadership development, teacher support, infrastructural dignity, education technology and learning outcomes. We recorded the following progress: • We expanded our partnership to include ten ECD centres – including converting a disused building in Zenzani Village (where many of our staff reside) into a functional centre – and had plans approved to build one in Lion’s River early next year. • Our Eduhelper programme has 25 young recruits who as sist with both teaching and school administration, and con tinues to make an invaluable contribution. • Our funded projects increased to 13 from ten and continue to deliver against our vision and mission. • Nine of our 16 schools now have functional computer labs, but we have very little in the way of classroom technology. • Asithuthuke Combined School now has Grade 12 dorms for 16 boys and 16 girls, enabling afternoon, Saturday and Sunday revision. • In collaboration with Breadline Africa we replaced the pit latrines in Crytal Springs Preparatory School, Lidgetton, with 13 flush toilets. • With the assistance of Barloworld we significantly renovat ed and refurbished the Jabula Combined School kitchen and toilets, which serve 800 learners. • With the assistance ABSA and Kusini Water we installed solar-powered boreholes at Eminyezaneni Secondary School and Brunville Primary. • We re-energised our literacy training efforts by employing a specialist in this field. • We significantly grew our training and development pro grammes, which saw increased attendance. • We continued to evaluate the schools to benchmark their progress in respect of leadership, infrastructure and in structional functionality. • The Trafalgar maintenance team visited monthly to attend to repairs. • We were particularly pleased with the 2024 matric pass results in our six secondary schools, which averaged well over 90%, up from 50% four years ago (see table below). The exception was Dabulamanzi Combined School. • We significantly improved our fundraising capacity by en abling our manager, Akhona Sikhakhane, to spend more time in this function in conjunction with the Michaelhouse Development Office. Our refreshed website, www.mcom munitypartnerships.com, is updated weekly. • Wherever possible we worked on the basis of “fair ex change” to engage our communities on the provision of services, contributing in cash or kind where feasible.

THE MCPT MISSION The Michaelhouse outreach programme is operated by the Michaelhouse Community Partnerships Trust (MCPT), a reg istered non-profit organization (NPO: 015292) focused on improving the functionality and effectiveness of our 16 com munity schools and seven early childhood development (ECD) centres as places of learning, with special attention on leader ship development, teaching capacity and training, infrastruc ture maintenance and education technology.

Michaelhouse is ranked in the top 100 schools globally and has been an acknowl edged centre of education excellence for

125 years.

Within 20km of the school there are 16 under-resourced rural state schools and 10 ECD centres in communities where un employment and poverty are a daily reality. Consistent with the Michaelhouse core values of integrity, humility, compassion, courage and service, the MCPT was established as an outreach programme to add value to these 16 footprint schools, with the singular focus being to improve their functionality as places of learning and add value to the broader Midlands community. Annually each school is evaluated and benchmarked to en sure that improvements occur in respect of instructional, in frastructural and leadership functionality. A dedicated team of three full-time staff and two interns, supported by a com mittee of trustees and committed volunteers, oversee 13 core projects to achieve this. Core to this outreach programme is partnering with the com munities where the schools are located, and collaborating with school principals, heads of departments, teachers and Department of Education circuit managers in the Lion’s River and Mpofana circuits. Where building, plumbing and electrical work is required we use local suppliers as far as is possible, so the money stays in the community; this significantly enhances the notion of schools being at the centre of the community. An additional component is that during the past year, under the guidance of Mrs Peta Roberts, we have significantly energized the impact of boys’ service with initiatives that add value to the above. In the past year we raised R8m in donor funding, and our target for 2026 is R10m. By way of background, of the 30 000 schools in South Africa, 5% are considered world-class institutions, 15% functional as places of learning, and 80% dysfunctional as places of learning. This does not necessarily mean they are failing, just that they are under-resourced. We have 16 such schools on our doorstep.

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