CBPS – What will they do with the Bowling Club land?

Letter to Cape Times
22 May 2014

Camps Bay Preparatory School – What will they do with the Bowling Club land ?

I am intrigued as to why there is such a strong attack and threat of potential hostile takeover of the Bowling Club and its premises, as the below research shows that the Preparatory School (CBPS) currently has sufficient space?

Being an ex CBPS parent and former pupil of Camps Bay High, I was for many years involved with the schools and more recently directly involved with the CBPS, so it puzzled me to learn of this bizarre situation, especially knowing how few kids there are actually living in Camps Bay. Add to this the fact that many parents who own property in Camps Bay choose to send their children to private schools from the start in order to get them into the relevant school streams, as this is a requirement/recommendation of schools such as SACS, Bishops, St Cyprians etc. This essentially means that of the small number of kids living in Camps Bay even fewer choose to attend the local schools, rather than are unable to be accepted as CBPS is currently portraying.

This has in turn made me question what is actually going on, and what I have discovered has further surprised me. I have established that the Preparatory School being part of the Primary School (albeit on separate campuses) are aiming in the coming years to increase their numbers so as to hopefully achieve 3 classes per grade of no more than 30 children per class (ie 90 pupils per grade), which will then follow on through to Camps Bay High School. Simply put this is not a new model but rather the same model as most schools, using the seamless upward stream from Grade 1 to Grade 12.

Therefore with the Preparatory School and Primary School actually being one school, with separate Campus’s and therefore shared facilities of over 13000m2 of school campus’s (valued at over a R100 million for the land alone) and another approximately 20 000m2 of school fields, tennis courts etc it doesn’t make sense that they need even more space for classrooms & more fields. Looking closer at the numbers with the understanding that the Preparatory school can only accommodate a maximum of 90 children per grade without needing to “eject excess” children as they move from one grade to another, and more specifically from Grade Two to Grade Three, it is logical that the Preparatory School needs a maximum 3 classes per grade.  (Otherwise imagine parents being told that whilst there are 95 children in your son/daughters class this year, there is only space for 90 next year !!)

With this now in mind one needs to look towards the Prep school facilities. Currently it has, 3 playgrounds, a large hall, 8 classrooms, staffroom and a multitude of offices. This means it could easily accommodate Three classrooms for grades 1 (90 kids) & Three classrooms for Grade 2 (90 kids) leaving two classrooms for the recommended but non compulsory grade R class (ie 60 kids) with the ability to create a third Grade R class by re working the existing building slightly. This means that the areas that are rented to private tuition have been set aside and not explored for whatever reason. So unless of course they wanted 4 classes per grade (ie 90/4) they have enough space, however being a government school I would not think that the Western Cape Education Department would be in favour of  22.5 children in a government classroom, as opposed to the average of around 35.

I have also established that the existing Pre R class is essentially a private playschool, which is facilitated within the existing campus, which could and should be moved to a more suitable location, and as luck would have it the school has a modern under utilised building on the School fields next to their tennis courts, which with a little imagination and planning would make for a magnificent playschool, being much improved on what can be offered currently. Just look toward Jan Van Riebecks playschool on their field.

Surprisingly, to date all the press has been mostly from the school and unprofessionally focused on criticising the bowling club members, together with some unfounded accusations being purported as facts, and leading people to believe that a viable and thriving club is on the ropes, yet nothing has been mentioned about the schools physical ceiling in pupil enrolment numbers? Furthermore the mere fact that by moving/closing the playschool would solve the enrolment issue for Grade R, 1 & 2 has been conveniently overlooked. Even stranger is that had this been implemented years back the primary school would already have 90 kids per grade, although I don’t think they are able to facilitate these numbers yet?

Most importantly, and what has been “washed over” is the fact that the Bowling club has agreed to an option that the Camps Bay Ratepayers Association have put together whereby the school could use some of the current space, and possibly already be in, but for some unknown reason the school have decided to go for “broke” and try get the entire space. This means that with Environmental Impact Assessments, Traffic Surveys and Public Participation it is at best only likely to have resolution 2019, assuming of course there are no additional factors which could delay the process even further, or of course that the proposal is overturned.

Another question that comes to mind is how are the school planning on funding this? They are forever needing to hold fundraisers to raise money for the basics, let alone the numerous projects that get no government funding, yet they aim to significantly increase their existing overheads, an I for one can’t see the already stretched education department redirecting even more funding to an already “privileged school”, especially as so many other schools are in dire need of the simple basics.

What is even more intriguing is that this whole process of trying to close an old established and viable club down has been able to get this far without any plans, sketch plans or even mention of how the school plans on using the 6000m2 of land and buildings? One can only be lead to the conclusion or conspiracy theory, that somebody knows somebody and that there is some political connection/motivation involved in the process, which unfortunately has been happening so often in today’s South Africa.

Perhaps someone can answer these questions, as getting the information together so far has been met with many “closed doors” !! Based on these actual numbers, the conclusion that has to be drawn is that CBPS do not want the facts to become public knowledge as this would mean the Camps Bay Preparatory School clearly has enough existing space to accommodate the requisite number of pupils without expansion, let alone the hostile takeover that they are trying to implement!

- Byron Herbert