School life in Swaziland

Education is strongly valued in Swaziland and a family may have to make sacrifices to be able to send their children to school. Fees have to be paid and it may happen that a family can not send all children to school. The child who is at school is under great pressure to perform well; otherwise he should have stayed at home looking after his father's cattle while his sibling was sent. Small children may have to walk an hour or more to reach school in a remote area and in winter time that may mean walking barefoot over frosty ground in high lying areas like Mbabane or Hlatikulu.

There are many schools in Swaziland and the quality of education varies; there are small primary schools that were set up by the community with limited means and sometimes with unqualified teachers; the Department of Education in Mbabane would then have to support them with equipment and teaching materials. On the other end of the spectrum there would be well-equipped Government and also Mission schools, sometimes with boarding facilities for children from outlying areas. There were even International schools, like Waterford-Kamhlaba in Mbabane, that also attracted students from South Africa during the "Apartheid" days when schools over there were strictly segregated along racial lines.

The photos on this page were taken at well equipped boarding schools in Manzini and Nhlangano. Salesian Primary and High School in Manzini was a well-run Catholic school and in the Primary section the children had a Maths laboratory with equipment that would make arithmatic easier to understand; there was a school band and many extra curricular activities. Its High School had well equipped science labs and a workshop with machinery to teach vocational subjects. Evelyn Baring High School in Nhlangano was a Government boarding school with excellent facilities including a swimming pool and many activities for the students. Its adjacent Primary school was also first class.

	School assembly	Ready for class	Doing Maths	In the Maths Lab
	Using a lathe	Woodwork lesson	Chemistry lesson	Science lesson
	Playing table tennis	Running race	Swimming pool	Boy Scouts

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