Cape Town - With a reputation for its continued outstanding performance, Herschel Girls School in Claremont dominated the Western Cape 2022 National Senior Certificate (NSC) awards on Thursday scooping first position on the Top 20 Schools list, including independent schools, that achieved excellence in academic results.
The southern suburbs school’s class of 2022, which boasted a 100% pass rate and achieved a 100% bachelor’s degree pass, were among many schools celebrated on Thursday at the awards, hosted at Premier Alan Winde’s official residence, Leeuwenhof.
It bagged three awards: the school in the province that obtained the highest score for the percentage of candidates taking maths, the pass rate for the subject, and the subject average of maths.
It also produced the highest pass rate in English Home Language.
“We are not only proud that the school was bestowed three awards, but also one of our former matrics was among the top 40 candidates awarded according to the marks obtained in their best six subjects. We are so proud of each and one of the 2022 pupils.
No matter what challenges they face in their lives they showed up and wrote the NSC exams. We are also grateful to all the staff members who put in the time and effort to support and care for the girls,” deputy school head, Tracy Rousseau said.
Rousseau attributed the school’s constant outstanding achievement to having a holistic education approach.
Princeton High School in Mitchells Plain and Nomzamo High School in Strand were among the top ten public schools with 30 or more candidates that showed the greatest improvement in pass rate over the period 2020 to 2022.
Princeton High School principal, Mogamat Isaacs, said with gang violence flare ups in Woodlands, they were doing their best to keep pupils motivated.
In 2020 the school obtained a 50% pass rate, in 2021 it achieved 57%, and for last year’s cohort increased the pass rate to 72%.
“The staff and pupils were committed to producing improved results despite the challenges of Covid-19 and social ills. The teachers put extra efforts such as having extra classes and setting targets for pupils.
“However, in our schools, after school extra classes or weekends have a low attendance due to gang shootings and other activities.
We also can’t have school meetings. We have gone through really tough times and our results were bad over the years but despite everything the 2022 class has done well,” said Isaacs.
Nomzamo High School obtained a 80% pass rate compared to 66.4% the previous year.
Cape Times