The ManicaPost
Ray Bande Senior Reporter—
IN 2013, they attained 97,3 qualitative percent pass rate with a total of 42 pupils attaining four units in the Zimbabwe Schools Examination Council Grade Seven results.
The following year, 34 pupils attained four units with the school achieving a 96,4 qualitative pass rate.
In 2015, they upped the tempo and attained a cool 97,3 qualitative pass rate with a total of 74 pupils getting four units, while in 2016 a total of 71 pupils attained four units when the school got an impressive 98,7 qualitative pass rate.
More importantly, in all these years and up to date, they were the nation’s best performing primary school.
Welcome to Chancellor Junior School!
To many, the words Que Je Surmonte, inscribed on Mutare’s flagship junior school Chancellor’s logo, sign posts or uniforms, might be cumbersome to pronounce for many but remains familiar to those in and around the eastern border city.
Simply put, the phrase, which has been Chancellor Junior School motto over the years and with its roots in French literature, means ‘that I may overcome.’
True to its motto, the Chancellor Junior School staff and pupils as well as parents that have children at the school, have laboured long and hard to overcome the challenges that come with creating an effective and conducive learning environment to become not only the province’s, but the nation’s leading primary school, at least as far as Grade Seven results are concerned.
As is always the norm, success does not come on a silver platter!
“The secret behind the success of the school in recent years is owed to dedication and team work. The instituting of the reading programme, PLAP and Syllabus interpretation has helped to produce good results.
“Learner-textbook ratio, adequate provision of stationery to both the learners and teachers helped the school produce very good results. Parental involvement especially in the administration of homework has helped in our success. Streaming of learners to provide adequate and appropriate work has also worked wonders. Teacher-pupil ratio is down in cognition of the stream,” Chancellor Junior School headmaster Mr Masimba Chihowa noted.
The school made a facelift of all its buildings by repainting, mending and painting the fence. The school also established a state-of-the-art computer laboratory with sixty LED 16” computers, a projector, and whiteboard. It has a fully subscribed WI-FI facility that is unlimited. Two Early Childhood Development (ECD) blocks with seven classrooms were also established and an ECD play centre.
Recently, the school acquired a double cab Toyota Hilux truck and a Sixty-five seater Zhongtong “Q” Bus.
The school has not lagged behind in the promotion of ICT and has in 2014 established a computer laboratory. It houses sixty 16” LED computers adequate for every class.
Learners from Grade Four to Grade Six get a feel of computers for an hour every week.
The lab is connected to the WI-FI to allow learners and teachers access to current information through the internet.
To bear evidence to the capacity development initiatives at Chancellor Junior, there are 49 teachers in the school and 95 percent of the staff are degreed with vast years of experience.
In 2015, the school sponsored its teachers to be computer literate. Staff development meetings done fortnightly help keep the staff abreast with current primary education trends.
The school also affords teachers opportunities to attend refresher courses in various genres that include sports, arts and culture.
Success of this magnitude would naturally invite its own fair share of challenges as every other parent would want to have their children enrolled at the school.
Surely the pressure from the prospective parents has been immense. The school being centrally situated and with impressive performance record has seen parents coming from all over the country and outside.
Mr Chihowa outlined the school policy in terms of its enrolment policy.
“The school policy is to first enrol those within the catchment area and then accept those from other areas. At times it is difficult to accommodate everyone but the school tries to enrol all, places permitting. A conducive learning environment is still viable especially with the help of our dedicated staff whereby the fast classes have bigger numbers and the slower classes very few learners to allow better teacher-pupil interaction,” he said.
The holistic approach to moulding a responsible citizen at Chancellor has also seen the school attaching so much importance to sporting activities for the pupils.
“Our performance in sport activities is equally matched with our academic record. Last year, one of our athletes (Makwayaura) broke track record for 100m and 200m in Namibia.
“Our swimmer scooped gold, silver and bronze medals at different competitions held last year. Tennis players went up to the international level to represent the country. We also had cricket players who were picked in the provincial team,” said Mr Chihowa.
