Sir Pierre closes gates to latecomers on the first day of school
The principal confirmed that the learners outside the schoolyard were eventually granted access.
A big group of learners were denied access to Sir Pierre Van Ryneveld High School on Monday when schools opened for the 2021 academic year.
This was due to strict protocols that aimed to enforce standard discipline.
“It’s one of the challenges you have when the majority of learners in a school utilise public transport,” explained Margaret Wrigley, the principal of the school.
“If you’re not strict, it gets out of hand. If you don’t start the way in which you were meant to proceed the year it would continue to be problematic.”
Wrigley understands that this enforcement seems harsh and said if learners use public transport, they should try to arrive at their transport ranks early to compensate for time-consuming circumstances.
“At times, we contact the metro rail, for example, to find out whether there are disruptions of schedules and take matters like these into account. There are learners who have legitimate reasons for being late and we try our best to accommodate them,” said Wrigley.
Express spoke to learners outside the school gate to enquire about their opinions surrounding the matter.
“It’s the first day of school. The traffic is worse as all schools are opening. There was an accident on the way to school that also caused us to be late,” said one matric learner, who wishes to remain anonymous.
The learners argue that these kinds of disruptions are to be expected on the first day of schools opening, especially during a pandemic.
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However, Wrigley said this had been a problem long before she was appointed the principal.
“We have tried many avenues to attempt to curb this problem, like shifting the gate closure times or phoning the parents, detention or community service. “Last week, we hosted parent-learner orientations at the school where we emphatically warned the parents, especially the Grade Eight parents, that we cannot tolerate latecomers,” Wrigley said.
“The gate closes at 7.45am, which was communicated to the learners throughout 2020, in addition to letters handed out at school and SMSes sent to all parents on the database. “The school adjourns at 2.30pm, while the matrics stay until 3.30pm to compensate for their seven one-hour periods. The Grade 12 learners attend school every weekday.”
As for the rest of Sir Pierre’s Covid-19 regulations, the timetable for Grade Eight to 11 learners consist of six periods lasting an hour. The school is divided into two groups that alternate days of attendance.
“The school day starts with a 15-minute homeroom period in which we facilitate sanitising and measuring temperature, which works very well as opposed to enforcing this at the gate upon the learners’ arrival.”
Wrigley said the group of learners that remained outside the school was eventually granted access.
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