One of our core values at St Anne’s is to ‘Reach Out’ with compassion, humility and service. Our aim is to nurture the 21st Century Old Girl who possesses a high regard for human rights, and has experienced and understood the issues of social justice, gender consciousness, and democracy. As a result, she will have an appreciation of, and respect for, her neighbours, acknowledge her differences, and discern wisdom as a resourced citizen of South Africa and the world by participating in social change, and asserting herself as a woman.
Our Social Responsibility Programme provides the opportunity for each girl to understand her responsibilities to society.
STEPP
STEPP stands for the St Anne’s Education in Partnership Programme, the College’s vehicle through which St Anne’s girls learn Social Responsibility. It is a popular extra-curricular activity with girls in all grades at St Anne’s, but participation is compulsory for the Grade 11s as they are required to complete a minimum of 20 hours of community service to fulfil the academic requirement of the Matric Life Orientation (LO) curriculum. Participation in the programme is empowering for the St Anne’s girls: as they experience firsthand the conditions of disadvantage faced by the learners whom they teach and support, they simultaneously develop an appreciation for the importance of “giving back” and learn to recognize the power they hold in their hands to help alleviate some of South Africa’s challenges. Indeed, the STEPP program instils a deep sense of collective responsibility, an appreciation in the girls of the role they can choose to play as change-makers in society, and develops a maturity that understands the self in a broader context.
STEPP is partnered with a number of primary schools that fall under the Department of Basic Education located in disadvantaged communities in the Mpophomeni, Lion’s River and Sweetwaters areas, and seeks to provide educational support to the teachers and learners in the Foundation and early Intermediate Phases (Grades 3 and 4). The main focus of STEPP is early Language Literacy Development – a response to South Africa’s literacy crisis.
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A recent report (Spaull, 2023) commissioned by the 2023 Reading Panel, a think tank of imminent South African educationalists, predicts that, at the current trajectory, it will take 86 years before all South African Grade 4 learners can read for meaning. This prediction is based on the most recent results of PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) (Mullis et al, 2023) that revealed that, given the multiplicity of long-term factors impeding literacy in South Africa, and having lost a decade of progress in reading progress during the Covid pandemic, 81% of Grade 4 learners in South Africa cannot read for meaning in any language.
Being able to read is a foundational skill: it enables participation in education and society, it improves health outcomes, supports engagement in cultural and democratic processes, and is directly linked to employability (South African Human Rights Commission, 2021; UNESCO, 2024).
STEPP Literacy Development classes are held every day of the week (except Fridays) by five of the six St Anne’s House partnerships, with each house assigned to a specific partner school to help learners overcome the literacy challenges they face and to develop a love of learning and reading in particular. The phonics-based curriculum, and the learning and teaching materials, are custom-designed and made to help learners in our partner schools improve their English oral language, decoding (understanding the relationship between letters and their sounds), reading, comprehension and writing proficiencies. Recognizing the benefits of learning through play, the game-based lesson activities are also designed to encourage a love of learning in general. Although these learning tasks are very different from those they experience in formal school time, the lessons are fully aligned with the national curriculum. All the lessons have at least one reading activity (the books around which the lesson centre are written by South African authors and are culturally appropriate); examples of learning activities to enhance learners’ listening, reading and writing skills include board games, card games, word searches and crossword puzzles.
The sixth House Partnership, Andrews, runs a Ball Skills programme to help younger children build motor and spatial skills, hand-eye coordination (necessary for many school activities including reading and writing), and basic sporting skills.
In addition to the six house partnerships, the Angel’s Care partnership has focused on supporting this organization, based in Howick in a variety of ways. Girls have worked in the Maddy Mouse House library on the Pre-Primary campus, contributed to the Angels’ Care Nutrition programme by making sandwiches on Saturdays, crafted 300 beanies for each of the children who are supported by Angel’s Care in their aftercare facility as well as run a Ball Skills Programme with these children in the first half of the year.
With learners either coming to St Anne’s for their lessons or St Anne’s girls travelling out to our partner schools, transport costs are STEPP’s main operational cost, second to the purchase of books (either as resources for the literacy classes, as well as the establishment and growth of libraries in our partner schools). Since these costs to run STEPP are not included in the College’s school fees, various fundraising activities have been undertaken in 2024 to finance them.
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MYSCHOOL
As one of South Africa’s biggest community programmes, STEPP engages in fundraising through this popular platform. By swiping your MySchool card at a partner store, that store makes a contribution on your behalf without any additional cost to you. Sign up for MySchool here.
GET INVOLVED
If you would like to get involved or make a donation, please contact the Head of Social Responsibility, Dr Nicki Kirby, on [email protected].