SCHOOL OF HOPE

Edmund van Vuuren, DA provincial spokesperson on education, visited schools in the Eastern Cape shortly after the start of the new academic year. Here he is at the Thomas Ntaba Senior Secondary School in Maclear. It was one of only a few of the previously disadvantaged schools in the Mount Fletcher district to do do well in last year's matric exams. The school achieved a pass rate of 89.3 percent. "This is an oasis in the desert of dysfunctional schools in the Eastern Cape," he said.