Message from Bill Burnett (1917-1994), former archbishop of Cape Town (1974-1981), for the school’s 21st anniversary:
When I was a schoolboy I had the impression that the schools at which I was being educated had been founded in a far distant age. The founders for whom we prayed regularly and gave thanks to God seemed almost infinitely remote, and here I am being invited as a founder of St Andrew’s School, Welkom, to send you a message as you celebrate your anniversary. Since in my mind founders of schools are part of a legendary world, I have had to reassure myself that I really did share in the founding of St Andrew’s, Welkom.
I have said very deliberately that I shared in the founding of St Andrew’s School because it was very much a shared enterprise. Mr Norman Ferrandi, the then headmaster of St Andrew’s School in Bloemfontein played a major role in it.
There were, of course, others too numerous to name here who gave time and effort to make St Andrew’s School Welkom a reality.
For all of us it required a major effort of the imagination to anticipate how a rather unprepossessing bit of land, which had been generously made available to us, could possibly become a school with buildings buzzing with activity and the vitality of young people vividly evident on its playing fields. It was all an exercise in faith.
I believe that education based on a Christian foundation is not simply something we should value, but that it is what the Lord himself desires for his children.
As far as possible then, the church has a responsibility to provide places of learning which aim at combining excellence in both academic and moral standards with the faith in God to provide the stable foundation from which character can grow and mature. Seven years spent as a boy in church schools has left me in no doubt of their great value.
