INLSA

Cara Bega, descends from a climbing wall in the schools occupational therapy centre, in an exercise to learn about shapes. Picture: Colleen Dardagan.

The last place parents want to send their children to school in Durban is equally the last place their children want to leave.

For 30 years Livingstone Primary School has not only met the needs of children with learning difficulties, but has been hailed internationally as a world-class facility and model from which schools across the globe have learned.

Principal of the school, Charlene Butt, believes that teaching is a profession rather than just a job.

“That’s why I could never even think about going on strike. We are not workers, we are professionals. We have awesome responsibility. We are forming the next generation. Even if I won the Lotto, I would still come to work,” she says.

Similarly, the 94 staff members at the school, many of whom have been at Livingstone for as long as 20 years, reflect their passion and dedication to their calling as they tirelessly encourage their charges to greater heights.

“To be a remedial teacher,” says Butt, “is about compassion, empathy, a love of people and realising the frailty of people. You’ve got to love. When I started teaching we never did it for the money, we did it because we loved it,” she says.

One of Durbans oldest buildings, the main school building at Livingstone Primary School off Lilian Ngoyi (Windermere) Road. Picture: Colleen Dardagan

INLSA

With over 400 children, Butt says the school is in high demand as more and more children are referred to the school by medical professionals and mainstream schools.

“We keep the classes down to 13 pupils because each child requires the equivalent attention of at least three mainstreamed children. Our programmes here are very intensive and deadline driven. Our aim is to get the children back into the mainstream schools as soon as possible.”

The facilities and teacher qualifications are of a “world standard”; speech and auditory therapists, psychologists, occupational therapy specialists among others, every one highly qualified and well versed in their field of expertise backed by a posse of medical practitioners.

“The work we do requires medical knowledge, as well as teaching knowledge,” she says.

However, Butt says first and most important, the school is a place of faith. “We work on prayer and over the years have had the most amazing answers to our prayers.”

Most children at the remedial Livingstone Primary School are exceptionally bright, all they need are the right coping mechanisms to express their brilliance.

Many arrive at the school as broken people, says Butt. Some have auditory or speech difficulties. Some are epileptic or dyslexic, and while the school follows the prescribed mainstream curriculum, essential therapies are squeezed into every school day.

With the youngest child in the school being only three years old, Butt says the problems are often exacerbated because they are not diagnosed when they are very young.

“We cannot get them early enough.”

Today’s children, she says, are suffering from the fast and pressurised lifestyles led by their parents, too much TV and junk food.

“Across society, children’s language skills are not developed. We have first-language speakers here who have no vocabulary. IT (information technology) and TV have become our child minders.

“Television particularly is very visual with high levels of stimulation while the body remains passive.

“This is really not good, particularly at night before they go to bed. Television is having a terrible effect on our children,” says Butt.

She adds that the anxiety levels in children are alarming. “A lot of the problems we see here are anxiety related, children are generally very anxious.”

When parents bring their children for enrolment they undergo an hour’s interview with Butt where she makes it very clear what is required. And fathers are often the ones who find it difficult to enrol their children at the school because of the perceived stigma of having to send their offspring to a “special” school.

“If parents are not prepared to work with us it is almost impossible to help their children. In fact I have had parents who say they can’t do it which means we cannot accept their children.

“Diet is very important, as is discipline and teaching children to be resilient – our society is a lot less resilient than it used to be and parents are mostly too overprotective – children must know there are consequences to their behaviour.

“Our children are also developing learned helplessness; because of our rushed life-styles, it’s far easier for a parent to do something for their child rather than making them do it themselves and being prepared to wait patiently while they do it. The (parents) must be prepared to encourage independence, responsibility and team work. To lay down boundaries.”

Butt says parents are told categorically that there are no guarantees or magic wands.

Few know of the great work going on behind the gates of Livingstone School.

The gracious gables and stucco walls built over a hundred years ago are probably more likely to be what we associate with the school.

As interesting as the remarkable teachers and teaching methodologies in the classroom, is the history of this grand old school off Durban’s Lilian Ngoyi (Windermere) Road.

First established as a school 116 years ago by the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, the site was then considered to be on the outskirts of Durban, better known as the County of Durban.

In 1906, the old house and grounds were donated to the then Natal Education Department which were replaced in 1910 with the present school buildings.

In the 1930s the school was renamed Stamford Hill High, a dual-medium school, and during World War II General Jan Smuts visited the school to review the guard of honour formed by the school’s cadets.

A cellar and bomb shelter beneath the school, which are used as classrooms today, were used as well as a portion of the school turned into a hospital base.

In the early 1960s the school was renamed Natalia Primere Skool, which closed in 1981.

The gracious building remained empty until the remedial school was transferred from Hunt Road in 1982.

Livingstone Primary School – a short-term remedial school – then opened its doors which makes this year its 30th birthday.

Butt, who first taught at the school before leaving to teach in Pinetown and then returning as the head, said the school was now a world-class facility which had impressed the New Zealand educational authorities to such an extent they had established the Livingstone model in that country.

“The school has been built up to be what it is today by our parents and governing body. Over the years they’ve worked tirelessly to raise funding for the best facilities and that’s what makes this school so special today. For example, our Tina Brown Speech Therapy Centre was built by Tina’s husband.

“She was struck down very young by cancer while her child was here at the school. These are the kind of parents who have their children here. They’re committed and work tirelessly for the school.”

Today the school has a specialist early development unit built in 2005 and in 2009 the team teaching facility, new offices, workshops and men’s quarters for workers who live on the property full time.

And, while Butt is feeling the pressure from the Department of Education to close the school, as it does not correspond with their integrated model of remedial teaching, which means children with learning difficulties are integrated into mainstream classrooms which Butt says is not fair to the child or the teachers – she says she will die fighting for the school to remain open.

“This is a special place, It’s been recognised as best practice internationally and our success stories speak for themselves. As long as I have breath in my body this school will remain open.” - The Mercury

#E-mail Colleen: colleen.dardagan@inl.co.za

Read about changes to IOL’s article comments