Imagine that 900 new pupils were going to be registered at your - or your child´s school after the summer holiday! And what is more, in addition to the 1200 pupils, who already attend the school. The situation seems to be absurd and pure fiction in most countries, but that were the harsh realities at the end of the summer holiday in January 2000 at Vukani Primary School in the South African township, Lower Crossroads at Cape Town.

Vukani Primary is one of the four schools, which has wished to share the Danish experience of creating a democratic school. Through the financial backing of the Democracy Fund in The Foreign Ministry of Denmark it was made possible that four teachers from SPF could hold one week of workshops for South African teachers in Cape Town in February 2000. The other participating schools were Sid.G.Rule and Wavecrest, both Cape Town schools - plus Klapmuts, a primary school near Paarl.

The main purpose of the workshops should be that the teachers by becoming acquainted with the Danish experience more quickly and better would be able to comply with the requirements of the new South African school reform, Curriculum 2005.

Therefore SPFs partner in S.A., EMEP in co-operation with the four schools already in October last year under the headline "Learning by Doing" selected 4 - 5 pedagogical projects among three times as many, which would be of special interest to the South African teachers. The projects, which were selected, were: project work, creative learning processes, evaluation, co-operation, and conflict resolution. An application to the Democracy Fund was worked out via e-mail in collaboration between SPF and EMEP. The plan was to carry through two weeks of workshops, where one half of the teachers at each school was attending a course during the first week, while the other half "took care" of the school, after which they could swap the second week. When the answer from the Democracy Fund came, we had to realize that it only gave the possibility of carrying through one week of workshops. Furthermore, the Western Cape Education Department decided that the South African teachers were not allowed to participate in our workshops until the afternoon, that is after they had been teaching from 7am - about 12. After that they could participate in workshops from 1pm - 7pm. Nevertheless, in spite of these limitations we decided to carry through the project - as far as it was possible in a week.

The evaluation of the teachers and the schools of the programme and the course of the week by no means gave us cause for regretting this choice. For the South African teachers it was important to learn, how a "learning-by-doing" oriented teaching felt on your own body, to experience that it was possible, and take courage in trying themselves.

For the Danish teachers it was striking to experience the enormous potential, which we met by our South African colleagues, the optimism and the drive they are showing in spite of the enormous challenges, they face.

The plan for further co-operation is that teachers at each of the four schools in future experiment with different learning-by-doing projects in proportion to Curriculum 2005 themselves. Also, it is the intention to apply for financial grant, so that a group of South African teachers from the four schools will have the opportunity of a study visit in Denmark in the Autumn 2000 to study the Danish "Folkeskole" more closely. After the return the experience is going to be used to inspire the colleagues at the four schools.