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STANMORE SECONDARY SCHOOL

History

Stanmore Secondary School is along the Gwanda-Bulawayo road, it is about 30km from Gwanda and 90 km from Bulawayo. it generally serves the Gwanda north constituency but has students from as far as the Umzingwane district.The school was set up in 1988 by the Government of Zimbabwe with the aim of reducing the distances travelled by students who used to learn in Mtshabezi or Mzimuni both about 20km away.

This is a council school and these are characterised by lack of funds and poor pass rates due to this shortage. This is primarily because the funds recieved by the council are used in the construction of clinics and amnenities for the area because the area has been undeveloped due to the civil disturbances of early 1980s

Building of classrooms and laboratories has been solely delagated to the school head, who is financially crippled due to the limited grant he recieves from the council. Strides, however, have been made as shown by the fundraising done by the school which ended with the construction of a cottage and 2 classrooms.

Science

Historically, rural schools have been perfoming badly in sciences in this country, Stanmore is no exception. This is due to lack of proper lab equipment and textbooks. The school realises the importance of this subject that is why it is asking for any wellwishers who can help us in any way in trying to fulfill our wish of producing capable science graduates.

Demographics

The school has a student population of about 300, who are all day scholars. these are served by a staff compliment of 15. All the teachers are qualified, the school has been fortunate enough to have volunteer guidance teachers from the UK. All the teachers stay at the school, in cottages built for them by the school. Water is the main problem faced by the teachers as they have to collect water from a community tape which is 3km from the school-this is shared by about 200 families. The school does not have electricity and teachers use candles for lighting and paraffin stoves for cooking.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

The school is requesting for books especially textbooks covering sciences, goegraphy and history among other disciplines.
Any well wisher with any solar energy gadgets that may be of help to the teachers or the science section may also chip in with donations.
Cash can greatly help us especially in our building endevours, we promise to send statements of how funds were used to the donors.
This list is not exhaustive, please feel free to chip in with any help you feel would benefit the rural school.