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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
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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.