| ####

21 / 36

21 / 36

Generous sponsorships by corporate partners have

enabled MUT to provide Umlazi Township’s top-

performing schools with educational resources that

they can use to both strengthen themselves and share

with underperforming peers. MUT’s engagements

with surrounding schools in terms of its Anchor

Strategy have revealed an impressive culture of

hard work among both primary and high schools in

Umlazi Township. If only the schools could have an

abundance of resources, the quality of education

would be unimaginable. This is what has motivated

MUT in appealing to corporate sponsors to be a

strategic partner in the rollout of MUT’s schools

anchor projects.

Mason Lincoln School teacher with one of the sponsors, Ahmed Motala, second from left, from New Africa Education

Foundation, and MUT and DoE officials

19

M U T

S P I R I T

/ /

J A N U A R Y - M A R C H 2 0 2 0

invited to be a guest speaker at the COE. In his speech,

Dr Rakometsi emphasised the centrality of schools

as centres whose main duty is “to prepare learners

conceptually or emotionally to play a meaningful role

in society or the workplace or in the development of

the values to function in a responsible and humane

way within society”, among other things. He added

that “society often has unrealistic and un-educational

expectations of what schools are meant to do. Based

on this, people simply draw conclusions that schools

have failed. A good school is a site for learning. It is so

often the case that schools, rather than being learning

organisations, are in fact ‘knowing organisations’.”

The 7th annual COE awards in 2020 acknowledged

the schools’ exemplary performance in Accounting,

English, Mathematics and Physical Science. Next

year this line-up will include Sports excellence within

Umlazi Township schools.

COE thriving through generous sponsorships

The impact of MUT’s Circle of Excellence awards is a

key example of this partnership in action. Their impact

has been vastly amplified by the educational and

teaching resources donated by corporate sponsors.

One long-standing sponsor is the Willowton Group,

a leading FMCG company based in Pietermaritzburg.

They have sponsored science laboratory resources and

mobile laboratories to the tune of more than R300 000

which we believe has contributed greatly to the excellent

performance of the Umlazi Township schools. At the

recent 2020 Circle of Excellence awards ceremony

on 13 March, Willowton sponsored a Natural Science

mobile laboratory for Grades 8 to 10, as well as 110

Oxford dictionaries to enhance the teaching of English.