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Sukulwenkosi Dube Plumtree Correspondent
PLUMTREE Boys High School is now a pale shadow of its former self and is struggling to lure pupils amid concerns over declining enrolment in the past few years.
The school head, Sipho Khumalo, told parents during a prize giving day on Saturday that the former top school had only 274 pupils out of an expected 500 with more pupils enrolling in rural schools.

He said the public now had a bad perception of the school owing to the low enrolment.
Khumalo said the school had 26 Lower Sixth pupils, 37 Upper Sixth pupils, 48 Form 4s, 56 Forms 3s, 49 Form 2 pupils and 58 Form ones.

He said the school opened with 176 pupils at the beginning of the year and was targeting to enrol at least 100 Form One pupils for next year in order to get the school back on track.

“The school’s a sinking ship because of our poor enrolment. A number of hostels and classrooms are lying idle and we’re struggling to renovate our buildings because of low revenue from levies being collected.

“In 2010 we had 120 Form 1 boarding pupils and now we’ve 58 Form 1s inclusive of boarders and day scholars,” said Khumalo.
He said if they failed to enrol 100 Form 1s then the school would make an appeal to enrol girls.

Khumalo said as a result of low enrolment figures the school was forced to transfer five teachers who moved to rural schools at the beginning of the term as it was overstaffed.

He said the school had a 500 hectare farm which was not being used and several other resources which were lying idle. The school covered 100 hectares of land.

Khumalo said school authorities were in the process of sprucing up the premises with the hope of attracting more pupils and improving its image.

He said they had set up committees comprising  pupils and staff members with one committee focusing on marketing the school.
Khumalo said the committee members were moving across different primary schools in Bulawayo and neighbouring districts marketing the school.

The headmaster, who assumed office this term, said the staff had a task of improving the school’s pass rate, which also remained low.
He pointed out that of late the school was not performing as expected in sporting activities as the grounds were deteriorating.

Last year the school recorded a zero percent pass rate in A-Level Biology and O-Level Chemistry.
Matabeleland South Provincial Education Director, Tumisang Thabela urged the school to widen its curriculum.

She also urged the school authorities to reduce their levies in order to make the fees affordable to local residents. “It’s good that you’re sprucing up the school in order to improve the enrolment but you could also try to make it affordable for day scholars. Make the cost for day scholars comparable to that of other schools in the area,” said Thabela.

She said a number of pupils were moving to rural schools leaving Plumtree High behind because of the cost.
Thabela said it would be difficult to have the school’s proposition to enrol girls accepted as the school was built specifically for the boy child. She also urged boarding pupils to remain disciplined at all times.

While other schools are complaining about being understaffed and over populated, it is a different case for Plumtree High School which was once a prestigious school.