When the matric results were released last week, Fish Hoek High School’s principal, Gavin Fish praised his pupils, teachers and the parents for their combined commitment to success.
“We had a phenomenal result once again – a 99.6 percent pass rate, with a 73 percent Bachelor’s (University entrance) pass rate, and our students earned 30 A aggregates,” he said.
Fish Hoek High School pupils achieved 54 B aggregates and 61 C aggregates.
“Our three top students achieved a 90+ percent aggregate,” he added.
The schools top five pupils were Callum Tilbury, Jamie Louis, Emma Mitchell, Georgia Croeser and Samuel Andrew.
The school’s top subject marks were by Georgia Croeser (forth overall) who achieved 99 percent for dance, and Callum Tilbury who achieved 98 percent for maths.
“Our matrics achieved 45 A’s for English and 31 A’s for life science,” said school PRO Sherri Bell.
“In all there were 318 subject A symbols achieved and six students achieved a total of seven A’s,” she said.
Mr Fish said he was grateful to the teachers who had inspired and supported the pupils to achieve these results.
“We offer free extra lessons to students which add up to 20 hours extra each week, and the result of this, speaks for itself. That we take children from a broad spectrum of situations is great testimony to them and the buy-in from parents and teachers who do not get paid for their extra time,” he said.
“To be clear, some of our students don’t have electricity – we inherit children who come to us from all over with a huge academic deficit: but they make it up, they work hard and their success is now self-evident,” he said.
He said he remains concerned at the extent to which first year university students fail – despite all the help they are given – and says that this is an issue that requires dire attention.
Mr Fish also addressed the issue of lowering the maths pass mark.
“This was an ethically good decision for Grade 9 students who could choose to take maths literacy the next year – failing or holding back a child who had passed all their other subjects because they failed maths was never a wise decision, especially as now they can take maths lit the following year,” he said.
* Simon’s Town High School was thrilled to announce a pass rate of 97 percent.
At the school, 66 pupils wrote the exams and 64 passed, achieving a total of 32 Bachelor’s passes.
The school’s top five pupils were Thamsanqa Hoza with an aggregate of 91 percent, Bokamoso Molale with an aggregate of 89 percent, Shannon Swart with an aggregate of 82 percent, Sushmita Nowases with an aggregate of 79 percent and Saluse Tsengiwe with a aggregate of 77 percent.
At Ocean View Secondary School, a quintile 4 school, 157 students wrote, 136 passed, equating to a 86.6 percent pass rate.
Masiphumelele High School, a quintile 3 school, achieved a 48.9% pass rate, with 221 pupils tackling their matric exams and 108 passing.
Muizenberg High School, a quintile 5 school, had 136 pupils write the matric exam and 131 passing, giving them a 96.3 percent pass rate.
* The quintile system places schools into categories according to the level of subsidy they receive, with schools in quintiles one to three receiving more in government funding and often being no-fee schools.
