180 Some refugee children from Zimbabwe who experienced trauma were not counselled at the refugee school. Alexio was not counselled despite harsh experiences he went through. The counsellor said:
Zimbabwean learners experienced horrific encounters in their lives. We counselled them and it helped a lot since most of them are able to focus on their studies. Some learners experienced trauma during their pre-migration and transmigration, but they were not counselled for PTSD (Interview, 29 May 2013).
Rutter (2003) postulates in the context of the United Kingdom that not all children who experienced trauma would be affected in the same way. Some refugee children may require strong counselling sessions while others are more resilient. They adjust quickly and cope well in school. One learner from FGD1 said: “my parents were killed and I was tortured by policemen when I tried to cross the border illegally” (FGD, 14 March 2012). The learner managed to adjust and cope with his schooling without any sign of PTSD. In the United Kingdom, Hodes (2000, p.
62) postulates that: “the majority of young refugees will cope well with the terrible events to which they may have been exposed and the very difficult circumstances under which they and their families have to live.” Despite experiences of PTSD, refugee children from Zimbabwe were faced with the need to negotiate a curriculum which has striking similarities, but also differences with what they were familiar with.
181 learning process (Grumet, 1995; Pinar & Grumet, 1976). Chitate Street School offers comprehensive curricular for primary and secondary learners, short adult professional courses and adult education for school leavers.
6.4.1 School Curriculum for Primary and Secondary Learners
The school offers a full educational programme for primary and secondary education to children of all ages. Table 6.2 below shows a list of subjects done at Chitate Street School of Refugees.
The Refugee curriculum was slightly modified by the school management team to incorporate life skills/orientation, computer studies, music and drama, arts and physical education, which are done by learners from Grade 3 to Form 4 (Pausigere, 2010).
182 Table 6.2 Chitate Street School Curriculum
Subjects
School levels
Primary school Secondary school
Grade 1-3 Grade 4-7 Form 1-2 Form 3-4 Form 5
Maths
English language
Science
Life skills/orientation*
Computers*
Art and craft*
Music*
Drama*
Physical education*
Commerce
Geography
History
English literature
Bible knowledge/Divinity
Accounts
Business management
Sociology
*Subjects added to the Cambridge curriculum for learners to study from Grade 3 upwards.
Source: Adapted from Chitate Street School records
According to the principal, primary and secondary school learners are doing different curricula at the school. The primary level, which extends from Grades 1-7, follows South Africa’s Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS). The primary level is registered and accredited by the Department of Education in South Africa. It meets minimum requirements of a school to operate in South Africa.
The secondary school level follows the Cambridge curriculum which is completely different from the CAPS. The principal said: “The decision to use Cambridge at the secondary school was agreed upon by the school (teachers and Bishop) and refugee community” (Interview, 27 May
183 2013). When the school and a community decide a curriculum for children to learn, that forms the mesosystem which, according to Bronfenbrenner (1979) occurs when parents and teachers interact to develop a child concerning his/her education. In an interview held on 27 May 2013, the principal said:
The school teachers and refugee community decided to follow the Cambridge curriculum for three main reasons, namely:
i) The Cambridge curriculum is international. Certificates obtained through Cambridge are accepted everywhere in the world. Since the school has children from 12 different countries, it was agreed by the Bishop, parents and teachers and refugee community that the Cambridge curriculum was better than CAPS because it enables children to go back to their home countries and integrate into tertiary education or the job market without problems.
ii) At the school’s inception, there were children and teachers from Zimbabwe only.
Currently, the majority of learners and all teachers are refugees from Zimbabwe. This was another reason for adapting the Cambridge curriculum because of the very high numbers of Zimbabwean children in the school. Zimbabwe used the Cambridge curriculum before and after it obtained independence in 1980. The Cambridge curriculum was then substituted by the then Zimbabwe Schools Examination Council (ZIMSEC).
ZIMSEC was heavily influenced by the Cambridge system because the two curricular once operated in collaboration in Zimbabwe. Chitate School adopted the Cambridge system because of its closeness to the ZIMSEC as compared to CAPS or any other curriculum.
iii) Learners were rejected by South African schools because they did not have documents.
This meant that learners were not going to be eligible to write South Africa’s matric examinations. This was different to the British-based Cambridge curriculum which allowed learners to write examinations without necessarily having refugee status papers.
The Bishop requested and was granted permission by the British Council to let children study the Cambridge curriculum while their refugee papers were being processed. In 2009 the Cambridge examination centre in South Africa, which is run by the British Council, allowed refugee children to write without asylum or refugee status documents.
Learners used their school identification cards during examinations.
The way in which the curriculum decision was made by the school and refugee community resonates with the ideas of Marsh and Willis (1995). According to Marsh and Willis (1995) there are two focal points around which decisions about curricular can be made. The first focal point is the nature of society. The curriculum takes into consideration the nature of the society so that it covers them in order to make students learn more about what is happening in their environments.
(Marsh & Willis, 1995). This aligns with the principal’s view that the decision of following the