A village school, built around the children of Luka.

Eight hundred and sixty-four learners, twenty-five educators, one borehole, two Acacia trees and a school yard that has heard a great deal of laughter since 1987.

Our story

Started by parents, kept going by parents.

Luka Primary School opened its doors in 1987, when families in Rathipa Section gathered enough bricks and labour to put up four classrooms behind the dirt road. For the first three years the school was run on a single chalkboard and a borrowed tin trunk of textbooks. The first principal, Mr Mokoena Sr., taught Grade 1 and 2 in the mornings and Grade 3 in the afternoons.

Today, almost forty years later, the school is recognised by the Department of Basic Education as a Section 21 ordinary public primary school. We are funded directly through the North West Provincial Education Department and audited by SA-SAMS. Our official EMIS number is 600 100 949. The walls are still the same colour as the Luka soil.

Milestones

1987 — First Grade 1 intake of 28 children, taught under a tarpaulin.
1994 — New democratic schooling era; first formal CAPS-aligned curriculum adopted.
2008 — Declared a No-Fee school under Quintile 3; 100% of learners qualified for fee exemption.
2014 — National School Nutrition Programme kitchen built with community labour.
2021 — New Foundation Phase block; introduced daily 20-minute reading slot.
2024 — Reached 864 learners and 25 educators — our biggest enrolment yet.

The cream-walled front entrance of Luka Primary School

Our scale today

A school of real, ordinary numbers.

We do not want to look bigger than we are. Here is exactly what is on our register, on the staff list and in the kitchen pots this term.

Learners on the 2024 register, Grade R to Grade 6

Permanent educators — including 5 Foundation Phase specialists

Active classrooms across two single-storey blocks

Languages of teaching — Setswana, English, isiZulu

Grade 3 classroom in quiet morning concentration

Our mission

Education that meets the child where the child is.

We exist to give every child of Luka Village the skills, dignity and curiosity to take the next step well. That means a strong foundation in reading and numeracy by the end of Grade 3; competent expression in both Setswana and English by the end of Grade 6; and the social confidence to walk into Grade 7 ready to keep going. We do not promise our learners a private-school polish — we promise them attention, structure and an honest start.

For most of our families, the school is the first formal institution their children encounter. We take that seriously. We keep the gate open from 06:30 for parents who walk to work, we serve breakfast porridge by 07:15, and we close each day with a 10-minute reading-aloud routine in every Foundation Phase classroom — because going home with a story still in your head is, for some of these children, the closest thing they have to a bedtime book.

Mission · Vision · Values

What we say to ourselves on Monday mornings.

These are not framed on the wall. They are written on the inside cover of every teacher’s planner.

Mission

To give every child of Luka Village a strong foundation in reading, numeracy and self-expression — in Setswana and in English — through honest daily teaching, a hot meal and a teacher who knows their name.

Vision

A village school where no child is invisible — where the slow reader, the talkative one, the quiet one and the brilliant one all get the same patient minute of attention from the same trusted adult.

Values

Botho (humanity), seriti (dignity), thuto (learning), and lefelo le le sireletsegileng — a safe place. Every staff meeting opens by checking that these four words are still describing what we do.

“A child who knows the way to school in the morning, and is glad to come, has already learned half of what we hope to teach.”

— Mr A. M. Ngoasheng, Principal