DHS welcomes Ashoka delegates

MEMBERS of globally recognised organisation Ashoka visited Durban High School on Thursday in their search for local schools that have identified themselves as innovative in their pursuit of grooming learners to be the changemakers of the future.

“We are in the process of understanding what schools do and are in discussions on the future of learning in South Africa, and what good education looks like in the country. We have been speaking to staff at Durban High School with the aim to understand how people are innovating around ideas of 21st century education. We need cognitive empathy as leaders, and we need to start at a young age,” said Sanjana Janardhanan from Ashoka.

Durban High School's headmaster, Tony Pinheiro, and educator, Roy Hellenberg, welcomed Sanjana and Lesego Mokobodi from Ashoka, and explained what the school was doing to encourage the development of well-rounded learners.

Roy spoke about preparing learners for university and for them to succeed in a multi-cultural world. He said entrepreneurship was the core aspect of what learners do in the country. He touched on international exchange programmes and the introduction of new subjects geared at exchange to African countries such as Portuguese and French. He said the school would be introducing new hands-on initiatives such as rocket building and community service. The school will also introduce the Cambridge syllabus next year.

Ashoka is a 35-year-old organisation with its headquarters in Washington DC. It currently networks in 80 countries identifying leading social entrepreneurs.

At present, the global network consists of more than 250 schools across the globe and the organisation hopes to add the first changemaker schools in KZN to the network and see them benefit from the partnerships and exchange programmes with similar schools on the world stage.

Schools within the network benefit from support from leading social entrepreneurs, corporates and local and global foundations.