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Creating a legacy through educating

“Education is the most powerful weapon that could be used to change the world,” is a phrase well known to Pete Ripuree Ngairo, a teacher at the Okahandja Secondary School. His journey as an educator started on 14 February 1999 at the same school where he attended high school, so he has been teaching for 23 years now.

This career path was one that Ngairo did not expect as he always wanted to become an accountant, but after he was awarded a bursary from the government, he had to study education, where he specialised in the commercial field. In the commercial field he is able to teach all commerce subjects mainly entrepreneurship, accounting, business studies and economics.

“Teaching learners who are willing to go the extra mile is what inspires me and keeps me going within this journey. Working with independent and committed learners despite their intellectual capacity just gives me that extra push,” says Ngairo.

With every great career comes a few challenges. For Ngairo these are dealing with ill-disciplined learners, learners that do not show commitment during lessons at school, seeing as this makes the educating process much more difficult. “Indiscipline of learners, low level of commitment from learners and the surge in the use of drugs from the side of learners remain limiting factors in the education sector,” says Ngairo.

In Ngairo’s 23 years of teaching he has accomplished quite a number of things such as a multi-task loaded balanced lifestyle and the results that his learners have been obtaining has been very good, but an accomplishment that stood out for him was from the 2021 NSSCAS results where his learners achieved a 100% pass rate with quality symbols.

“One of my greatest achievements was from the NSSCAS level learners achieving 100% pass rate with A’s in Entrepreneurship in the recently published results for the 2021 External Examination,” said Ngairo

Ngairo is a teacher during the week and a farmer during his free time. If he is not in the class teaching learners commercial subjects he is at the farm grazing his animals something that he enjoys so much as he is always seeking business opportunities within the agricultural sector.

Ngairo says when you are studying to become an educator you have to put your ego aside, as this can be one very humbling career where you will have the opportunity to open the eyes of the Namibian child and act as not only an educator but a parent as well. “Here we put egos aside and work tirelessly for the sake of the Namibian child,” said Ngairo.