I have recently returned from a 2 week volunteering trip to a township primary school in South Africa teaching sports education. A typical day included teaching about 400 children over 5 class sessions with another teacher and I. We got to choose what we taught the children and it often involved songs and dancing with the younger children, and basketball and football drills with the older ones.

Later in the afternoon 4 children were selected that the teachers had felt worked particularly hard and was not based on academic results. We drove the children to the coast to be taught surfing. This incentive programme is wonderful and the children absolutely love it. 2 of the boys walk every Saturday morning 8 miles to the surf school just to go surfing again and then have to walk back. They work harder to try and get back on the incentive programme.

 Despite the children at this primary school clearly having very little, ill fitting uniforms, some with no shoes,  sometimes no chairs to sit on in class, little food and only outside water sources they were the happiest, loving children I could hope to work with.