About

Cotswold Primary School was established in 1958 due to a need foreseen by the Cotswold community and relentless efforts by Miss H.A Wepener, the first Headmistress. It is a Quintile 4 school situated in Newton Park. Newton Park is mostly a business area with few residential buildings. We have an enrollment of +-540 learners and a staff compliment of 30 staff members including the non-teaching staff of which 14 are employed by the Department of Education and 16 are employed by the School Governing Body (SGB). About 95% of our learners come from the historically disadvantaged areas namely Zwide, Kwazakhele, Kwamagxaki, Kwadwesi, New Brighton, Motherwell, Northern areas etc. Cotswold used to be a Preparatory School from 1958 until 2013 when we decided to incrementally grow the school to be a fully-fledged Primary School. The reason for that was because our Grade 3 learners struggled to get a place for Grade 4 in the neighbouring schools. So, from 2014 we decided to add a Grade 4 class. We kept adding a Grade every year until 2017 when we had our first cohort of Grade 7’s.

We receive hundreds of applications from parents every year but unfortunately, we have very limited available spaces due to our classroom sizes and small playgrounds since the school was designed as a Preparatory School. We have tried to keep our school fees as low as possible so that our parents/guardians can easily afford to pay the fees. Since we are a Fee-Paying school, our main source of income is School Fees. We get very minimal financial support from the Department of Education, but we are very grateful that at least they pay salaries of the 14 departmental staff members I mentioned earlier on.

We are a values-based institution which believes in the Fear of God as the beginning of all wisdom.  We teach our learners to always uphold good values and discipline wherever they go. We hold Assembly with all our learners every Friday in which we teach and give practical examples on how to uphold these important virtues and to lead an exemplary life, so that they can become responsible global citizens when they are old one day. Some of these virtues are inscribed on our walls and staircases to be a constant reminder to our learners. Most of our learners continue to shine and hold positions of leadership and responsibility wherever they go after leaving our school.