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A small school holding a quiet promise — that every child in Magong gets seen.

We sit on a dirt road in the Morokologadi section of the Bojanala District, North West. Forty years on, what we offer is simple: clean classrooms, a hot lunch, three languages on the chalkboard, and a teacher who knows your child’s name by the end of the first week.

Aerial view of the Magong Primary School campus showing two single-story brick buildings around a dirt courtyard with surrounding farmland
Front facade of the Magong Primary School teaching block with covered concrete walkway and acacia tree
A Grade 3 girl writing carefully in her exercise book with morning sunlight on the page
A young learner deeply focused on building with wooden blocks

Chapter One — A school built by neighbours

From a one-room mud building in 1985 to six grades, eight teachers and 151 children today.

Magong Primary School was opened in 1985 by a handful of farm families who wanted their children to learn close to home. The first classroom was a single mud-brick room with a tin roof and twenty desks borrowed from the local church. By 1992 we’d added two more classrooms; by 2004 we became a registered Section 21 school under NatEmis 600100994; and in 2014 the National School Nutrition Programme began serving a hot meal to every learner, every day.

Today we are a Quintile 1 no-fee primary school. That is our circumstance, not our excuse. We teach the full CAPS curriculum across Grades R–6, in a Language of Learning and Teaching that moves between English, Setswana and IsiZulu — because that is what our children speak at home and on the school bus.

Our mission is plain: to keep each of our 151 learners learning, fed, safe and known. Not the loudest mission in the district. But it is one we keep, every Monday morning, when the gate opens at 07:15.

1985
Established Founded by farm families on this very plot.
151
Learners (2024) Grades R through 6, taught in three languages.
8
Educators A teacher-to-learner ratio of roughly 1 : 19.
100%
No-Fee · Section 21 Every child eats. Every child learns. Free.

Our Compass

Mission, Vision & Values

Three short paragraphs we keep on the staffroom wall. They are not slogans. They are the test we use when a hard decision lands on the principal’s desk.

Mission

To give every child of Morokologadi a strong start in literacy, numeracy and self-belief — in the languages they speak, in a school they can walk to, free of fees.

Vision

Children who leave Grade 6 reading confidently, writing honestly and curious enough to ask “why” one more time. A school that the village is proud to call its own.

Values

Botho — we treat each other with dignity. Honest work. Patience with small steps. Pride in our home languages. The promise that no child sits hungry at this school.

Three children leaning over a science worksheet, one explaining to the others

A note from the Principal

“When I joined Magong in 2018, the staffroom kettle was older than half the children. We’ve replaced the kettle, painted the walls, planted a vegetable garden and re-tiled the kitchen. But the part I’m proudest of is harder to photograph: a Grade 3 boy who couldn’t name a single letter in 2022 stood up last term and read his composition aloud, in English, without flinching.”

— Mrs. Emma Thandiwe Pheto, Principal

“A small school is not a small life. It is the closest place a child knows, after home, where they can be quietly seen.”

A line from our staff handbook