RUNDU - The Kavango West Regional director of education, Teopolina Hamutumua has commended Leevi Hakusembe Secondary School for a job well done after their pre-vocational learners who are doing woodwork repaired over a thousand broken chairs and desks for various schools recently.

The broken chairs and desks were from schools in the region affected by the lack of chairs and desks for learners apart from the lack of classrooms.

Speaking to New Era, the regional education director enthused she was amazed by their skills, and she applauded the learners and teachers for doing excellent work that saved government money.

“Usually what we are doing is that we collect frames of broken chairs and tables, in different circuits and we took them to Leevi to be repaired by the learners who are busy doing woodwork as a pre-vocational subject. We bought the materials and whatever is needed for them to do the work including machines and they were excellent, just when the school re-opened over a thousand chairs were delivered, some at Bunya combined school and some at Nkurenkuru Combined School,” she said. “What we do is to record which frames are for which school, for example if we record 200 chairs and table frames for a particular school they will get those 200 repaired chairs and desks.”

As a director of education, Hamutumua says she is proud that the pre-vocational learners are doing well and in the same vein are assisting other schools to fix their broken chairs and desks. 

“I am very proud, this is the purpose we educate our children, it’s pointless for us to educate them and at the end of the day unable to practice what they are being taught. Them repairing this chairs and desks is sufficient proof to say that these learners have been provided with quality education that will make an impact in their lives, if they want to they can continue their trade in that technical field after Grade 12 and make a living for themselves,” she noted.

“They have what it takes to take over the manufacturing industry one day if they have to.” 
Apart from woodwork, learners at Leevi Hakusembe are also doing bricklaying and welding as pre-vocational subjects from Grade 8 to 12 and at the moment Leevi is the only school teaching pre-vocational subjects in the entire region but the directorate of education has plans to introduce these subjects at Kahenge Combined School at Nkurenkuru.