With the help of the world’s third-largest platinum miner, Lonmin, students of the Thaba Morula High School in the Greater Lonmin Community (GLC), in Marikana, Rustenburg, will graduate from secondary school this year with a matric certificate and a technical diploma.

Since none of the seven high schools in Marikana offer technical subjects, the recovering miner has embarked on a project that supplies technology kits to and provides supporting workshops for the schools in the GLC. This is part of the company’s community development programme, which focuses on education, health and local economic development.

Lonmin’s initiative aims to expose those learners interested in pursuing a technical career to the necessary information required to obtain an N1 trade-theory qualification, further increasing their chances to obtain an N2 certificate.

Community education programme manager Christell Clark tells Mining Weekly that the initia- tive to incorporate a technical diploma into the pupils’ regular schooling stems from the Technical Preparedness Programme (TPP), originally established in 2012 by Lonmin, for selected postmatric GLC students to prepare them for a future technical career.

The programme is residential – learners attend a one-year full-time course away from home. They attend and complete the course as members of two alternating groups – mechanical and electrical – and are expected to complete the N2 qualification by the end of the year.

Clark says that, of last year’s 28 TPP learners, 76% received their N2 qualification, which she considers a success for the first year of the programme.

She adds, however, that the TPP will start being phased out in the next three years, owing to the success of the in-school programme.

Meanwhile, Lonmin’s community education programme is also running the Ithuteng extracurricular support programme, which targets the top performers in grades 8 to 12 to provide learner support, extra lessons and career guidance.

“The programme, which runs four afternoons a week, including Saturdays, is for high-potential learners who are integrated into the University Preparedness Programme (UPP),” says Clark.

The UPP, established by Lonmin and nonprofit organisation the Ukoqonda Institute, was created to provide learners in the Marikana region with a range of bridging programmes aimed at developing learner ability in science, mathe- matics and English to better prepare them for tertiary education.

“The UPP is also a one-year residential programme for postmatric learners who enter into the programme to prepare for life at university,” says Clark.

She explains that some learners living in the GLC have never been beyond the community’s borders, which is why the UPP exposes them to first-year engineering projects, research projects and life skills, including how to live away from home and how to handle their finances.

Sustainable Support

Lonmin has been providing support to Thaba Morula High School since 2006, when the mining company provided the school with an administration block, ten additional classrooms, two additional ablution blocks, an upgraded computer centre, a public address (PA) system and a bus to help transport learners to and from school.

Lonmin human capital and external affairs executive VP Barnard Mokwena explains that the community education programme goes beyond addressing basic education. He highlights the five pillars of the programme – adequate infrastructure and learner resources; additional learner support; educator support and training; parent support, including a new grapevine SMS system that enables the school to communicate more efficiently with parents; and proper nutrition to aid learning, concentration and memory.

Lonmin recognised that many children in the community were arriving at school without having eaten and, therefore, started providing the children with a daily meal by supporting the Depart- ment of Basic Education’s (DBE’s) school nutrition programme.

To ensure further sustainability of this project, Lonmin is working with the schools in the GLC to develop food gardens that will supplement the DBE nutrition programme in future.

Mokwena highlights that, five years ago, the seven high schools in the GLC were classified as ‘trapped’ by the Department of Education, which referred to their matric results being below the national average.

“This past year, however, Marikana’s schools received the best matric results in the North West, which shows that sustain- able support can bring about change,” he says.

Currently one of the best in the region, Thaba Morula High School enjoys a matric pass rate of 80% and hopes to attain a pass rate of 100% this year.