THIS week is proving very exciting for Cape Recife School as they celebrate a milestone birthday.
From the beginning…
The school was established 65 years ago on March 1, 1956. According to the principal, Jacques Hugo, the process to open the school started in about 1954, when founder Hannah Lurie was looking for a school for her daughter, who had cerebral palsy.
She couldn’t find a school in the Eastern Cape for learners with special education needs.
“She then started the long process of opening a school,” Hugo said, “cajoling, threatening and pestering just about anybody that she could find, including the Department of Education, the Minister of Education and the Mayor of PE at the time.”
The then national Department of Education finally consented and the school was founded.
It started out in a church hall in Central, with seven learners.
The land they are currently located on, in Summerstrand, was donated by a well-wisher to the school and the Cerebral Palsy Association (CPA). According to Hugo, the school was founded by the CPA and Lurie together, as she was the president of the association at that time.
Cape Recife and the CPA are still situated next to each other.
“From there on it just grew,” Hugo said. “We’ve been in these buildings since 1963, upgraded twice and we continuously see where we can upgrade.
“Now we deal with learners who are physically disabled, learning disabled, hearing disabled, visually impaired, have cerebral palsy and higher functioning autism – a wide spectrum.”
From the initial seven learners, they’ve grown to 464, from Grade R to Grade 12.
Last year, COVID-19 tried to knock them down a peg or two, but they got creative. Hugo attributed the school’s 91,7% pass rate to the staff – and of course the learners.
“Some teachers spent 16 or 17 hours a day teaching. They worked really hard. We had a variety of methods we used during lockdown like all other schools,” he said proudly.
“We even had a maths teacher who phoned learners to explain things to them.”
This year they were looking forward to celebrating the school’s 65th birthday with the annual fund-raising carnival, but with COVID-19 still making the rounds, they’ve had to readjust their plans. On Friday, March 5, they are planning on having a special day for the learners. They will be having a virtual assembly – every class gets a projector – and each learner will get something sweet to mark the occasion.
“Since we didn’t have athletics day this year, we’re also taking an hour off just to say thank you to the kids for being so hardworking last year,” Hugo said.
For him, it will be a bittersweet event, as he is planning to retire at the end of the year.
“I’ve been around a while, but there are staff members who have been here longer than me.
“We tend to come here and not want to go away,” he concluded.
