Moffat Mungazi
Ray Bande
Senior Reporter
FOUNDING Hillcrest College learner, Mrs Sarah Shoesmith, who was part of the first cohort of learners upon the establishment of two Form One classes in 1985, is now the new principal for Hillcrest Schools in Mutare.
Over the years, Hillcrest Schools have been a beacon of academic, sporting and cultural excellence, holding on to being Manicaland Province’s face of private schools.
In a one-on-one interview with the well-travelled and experienced educationist at her office on Tuesday, Mrs Shoesmith, said her vision for the institution is to make it all inclusive and equitable.
“The school is a very kind school where people are happy, and they feel that the staff cares about them. This ethos has never left the school. Despite going through its ups and downs, like what any other schools undergoes, it always maintained that special ethos, and that is what drew me back to the school.
“This school has so much to offer. It has got space. It has hard working staff members who aspire to get to the best of their ability. Our children learn to love learning. We want our children to love learning so that they become lifetime learners.
“For the rest of their lives, they just keep on wanting to acquire new information. We also want them to become lifetime leaders, and everything rises and falls on a leader. We are all leaders at the end of the day, we just have to be the best we can on that particular day.
“So, my vision for the school is to get it from a good school to a great school by empowering my staff. I want to make them believe in themselves, and giving them the skills that I have learnt from overseas so that we sharpen our education provision as well as giving an enriching education to our children.
“We want to ensure that they have a broad education base, they do cultural and sporting activities. We have a brilliant boarding facility for children who love out of town experience where they feel cared for. I go and visit their boarding facility every week, both the prep school and the college, and I get a real sense of family there. I get a real sense of care,” she said.
Mrs Shoesmith shared a bit of her background that led her to rejoin Hillcrest Schools.
“With my degree from Rhodes University (South Africa), I went to the United Kingdom with my family and undertook a post-graduate certificate with an open university to qualify as a teacher in the UK.
“I got a fantastic experience working in government schools in the UK for a couple of years, but I had to come back home together with my husband and three children.
“I had a brilliant experience at Peterhouse, working there as a teacher and middle to senior management position. When our children finished school, we decided to go overseas to get further experience in top quality schools.
“I worked there for four years, doing both teaching and management. We learnt a lot, really sharpened up our skills in terms of what we are ought to do in the education industry.
“Somewhere along the lines, this post came along that Hillcrest were requiring a principal, and being a former student, having been born in Harare, but spent much of my childhood in Manicaland, my father was an advocate here in Mutare for a while, I felt the big pull to come back and add value to this great school.
“That is basically the story of how we came back to our homeland, and my husband is also working at the school, developing the business side of the school. Hopefully we can get this school, which is a good school, to a great one,” she said.
The new Hillcrest Schools principal also shared her experience back in the mid-80s when she was a student at the same school.
“In January 1985, I was a Form One student at the college, when it had just opened. The prep school had been operating for a few years. Our classrooms were down at the prep school, and in that first years there were two Form One classes with four teachers.
“We spent most of our afternoons planting grass for all of our fields, and the whole set up here for us to move up here a year later. So actually, January 1986 was our first time on this campus up here at the college. We only had one set of classrooms here. From that year it grew. It grew by one set of classroom each year.
“It ended up really flourishing. I have so many fellow Crestonians who are really proud that they have been at the school. They loved it. They loved the fantastic ethos,” she said.
For Mrs Shoesmith, being a Crestonian is much more than just being a prep or high school learner.
“We are a small country school, but we can offer a lot for our community in Manicaland and beyond. I hope to continue to share that lovely ethos and let it flourish.
“I think a Crestonian has a lot of resilience built into their education experience, and I have utilised that resilience traits throughout my life. At Hillcrest, we work hard, and we are grateful for everything that we have.
“We do not have lots of things. It is not a very expensive school, but we are grateful for what we have. We want to make good use of that. One of those things we can build on is resilience, perseverance, and those are values you can take with you wherever you go,” she said.
Mrs Shoesmith also spoke about her all-inclusive approach.
“I welcome everybody in Manicaland and even abroad. People in Mozambique, the same for locals, they are welcome from Nyanga all the way down to Chipinge. People of diverse religious backgrounds are welcome. I just want to make this institution inclusive, equitable and welcoming as much as we can.
“I love everyone’s support. I want us to become more of a community oriented schools, and actually raise the whole pillar of education in Manicaland. We can do this together,” she said.
One of the things one cannot take away from Hillcrest School is their excellence in sport.
After producing world class athletes in Olympian, Makanaka Charamba, and United States-based gifted short distance runner, Panashe Nhenga, among many others, Mrs Shoesmith is confident of investing more energies and resources into sport.
“Sport is one important aspect of the whole education system together with academics. I acknowledge that we are a bit handicapped on specialised coaching, but what I want to do is to develop the people that are part of the system so that we can instill that love of sport, activity and health.
“When it comes to specialised coaching and skills, we can outsource, but we also want to train the staff that we have here so that they become better in whatever they are doing so that we develop from within. Sport is important because it is part of our health and wellbeing,” she said.
This is the story of Mrs Sarah Shoesmith – the new Hillcrest Schools principal!
