Classy Goodhope school on track for January

CHANDAPIWA BAPUTAKI
Staff Writer | Friday November 30, 2007 00:00

The construction of Goodhope Senior Secondary School, which started on January this year is about 98 percent done. Work continues round the clock to meet their January deadline.

'I have visited the site earlier and I was told that the construction is on schedule and the school would open by January next year as planned,' Nkate said.

This achievement comes after stalled developments at the Botswana International University of Science and Technology, which was supposed to be opened by 2009 but no construction has started at the site.

The Goodhope school exhibits facilities that are unmatched in other schools in the country.

The classrooms are very spacious 'and the ratio of teachers will be about one teacher to 20 students,' the engineers explained.

There is a multi-disciplinary block where there are classes for specific subjects like music with soundproof walls, art and others. 'It is a good school with standards of a college and could easily be turned into a tertiary institution with all these facilities,' the engineer said.

Other provisions include a pigsty, poultry house, rabbit and sheep pens, and a net house for agriculture.

The school has a football pitch with tracks for athletics, tennis, volleyball, netball and basketball courts.

While in other boarding schools students are still crowded in dormitories sharing lockers, at Goodhope only four will share and each will have a wall wardrobe. There are ten blocks of hostels carrying 2, 400 students in total. There is also a big multi purpose hall, six blocks of toilets and one dining hall beside the hostels for the convenience of the students.

The school also boasts 27 teachers' flats for four tenants each residing on a three-bedroomed apartment, eight double stories for the heads of the department, one big three bedroomed house with a garage and a servant's quarters for the headmaster and two single houses for disabled teachers.

For the first time, the staff will have their own tennis and basketball courts.

'We have been there before and it is a very nice school that would require a strict management to jealously guard against vandalism.

Looking back at what has been happening in other schools, it is scary to even think about that happening here,' said one elderly woman, Eldah Modise.

According to one of the directors, the school has sparked a lot of interest in neighbouring South Africa. 'Some education officials from different provinces in South Africa came here to tour the school and see if it is really possible to construct such a school within a year,' he said.

He, however, said that the school would be expensive to maintain costing roughly P6 million a year to keep it up to standard. 

The builders say with 98 percent of the job done, the school will open its doors in January next year.