Page 67 - KBHA BULLETIN 2

64

Things had not always been so. When D P Morgenrood, a wealthy financier and property

owner, supplied the funds in 1876 for a church and a school, with a teacher’s house on the
premises, he was concerned to uplift a poverty-stricken fishing community. Typical of

schools administered by the Dutch Reformed Church, it was supported and funded until such

time as the local community was in a position to provide suitable premises. Housed in two
small rooms behind the Church (Figs. 3.10 & 3.11), the little third-class school offered only

the rudiments of elementary education at the hands of teachers who were only required to

have completed Standard IV, and reached the age of 14 before embarking on a three-year
apprenticeship in 1894. Many of those who taught in the early years were less well-equipped.

A particular disadvantage confronting these schools was that their principals were paid half as
much as their counterparts in second-class schools (Sub A to Std. VII), and but a quarter as

much as secondary school heads. Consequently, it was difficult both to attract and to retain

better qualified teachers, and there was a fluctuation between high turnover of competent
heads and over-lengthy tenure by some who were less effective. The debilitating effect that

such a head might have is illustrated by the case of S. F. J. Weich who was the incumbent

from 1912 to 1927, during which time he was convicted in the magistrate’s court for caning
girls, disciplined for failure to close the school on Armistice Day in 1918, and whose

authoritarian style antagonised parents to such an extent that most withdrew their children

after Standard II and sent them elsewhere to avoid his teaching them. Responsibility for
Standards III - VII in one class can have been no easy matter for him to handle, either. Like

him, three of his successors left the school under a cloud, the circumstances, in each case,

having a profound effect on this small community and the school whose survival was
frequently threatened before the Second World War.

Steady growth, accelerated by the advent of the railway line, fishing progress and property
development, as well as the establishment of a Municipality at Kalk Bay, had little effect on

the way that local worthies viewed education. It was only the threat by the School Inspector,
that the Government grant would be withdrawn at the end of 1899 unless steps were taken to

erect a suitable building, that impelled action and secured local guarantees to fund a new

building. The design of the building was the standard one of small government schools of the
time and shows a symmetrical building with two wings. In the event Kalk Bay Primary was

never fully developed according to this plan. (Figs. 3.12 – 3.14.)