Some centaurus High School pupils in Windhoek have rejected president Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah’s remarks that the school has been performing poorly since a mall was built in its proximity many years ago.
The pupils were responding to remarks by Nandi-Ndaitwah, who raised concerns about the close location of the mall to the school. The mall was built in in the early 1990s.
“Maerua Mall was just built next to the school, today it is the worst performing school,” the president says.
Nandi-Ndaitwah made the remarks over the weekend while inaugurating the Helao Nafidi Sports Centre in the Ohangwena region, where she spoke about the importance of investing in young people and creating an environment in which they can develop their potential.
She says the newly built facility should not affect the performance of schools in its vicinity, citing Centaurus as an example of a school whose performance declined after a mall was built next to it.
Some senior Centaurus pupils, who asked not to be named, told The Namibian yesterday that the school’s academic results do not support the suggestion that it is among the country’s worst-performing schools.
“We constantly have to look back at the results at the end of the day. If you look at 2025, Centaurus was actually one of the good-performing schools, so I don’t know where that idea came from,” the learner says.
The learner questioned whether the presence of a shopping mall or businesses near a school could reasonably be blamed for poor academic performance.
“Still, at that point, the real problem was that there was no discipline, there was no management in the school and there was no good governance.”
Another learner also disputed the suggestion that a significant number of Centaurus learners spend their time at the mall before or after school.
The learner says some learners could also be exposed to new influences after entering an environment such as Centaurus, which could affect their priorities and academic performance.
“I believe that to essentially reach the real problem, we have to look at statistics and we have to confront teachers, principals and the students before making these remarks,” the learner says.
‘DONATIONS’
The owners of Maerua Mall had not responded to the concerns of the mall’s proximity affecting the schools academic performance.
However, Oryx Properties, the owner of Maerua Mall, confirmed that it donated school books to Centaurus High School last year and five computers this year. Oryx Properties spokesperson Carmen Maartens confirmed the donations to The Namibianon Sunday.
In a social media post, Oryx Properties says in collaboration with Nanodog, the company donated five computers to the school’s AS Level Computer Centre to support learners preparing for this year’s national examinations. The company further congratulates Centaurus for its sixth placing in the Khomas region in last year’s examination results and wished learners well in the upcoming examinations during the donations.
In 2008, The Namibian reported on rumours that the school could be relocated to make way for an expansion of the mall.
Efforts to get hold of the school principal for comment were unsuccessful at the time of the report.
