Let the light shine on the passion and dedication of the educators
DM168
How many of you remember going to jostle with thousands of matriculants late at night outside one of the daily newspaper houses waiting to buy a copy of the paper to see if you passed matric?
When I was the editor of The Herald in Gqerbera, the matric results edition in 2011 increased our sales from 22,000 copies to 100,000 – even after the Department of Basic Education stopped publishing matriculants’ names to protect them from humiliation or harm and instead published exam numbers with permission from the students.
Unfortunately, we do not publish matric results in this newspaper and most learners now access their results online on the various education department’s websites, the SABC’S USSD code and Matricsmate app, and newspaper websites.
I was stymied in the early hours of Friday morning when I tried all the digital options to find my son’s matric results.
I swear it would have been more fun and worthwhile jostling outside a newspaper house with thousands, because every online server had crashed. Matric is just that big a deal. This year 881,219 learners, their parents and teachers all wanted to know whether they had passed or not.
At 2am the SMS for my son’s results arrived. What a flood of pride and joy I felt when I read those words – obtained admission to bachelor’s degree. The stress of waiting and his endurance of 12 years of formal basic education were over.
No more maths, English, Afrikaans, science. He can now focus on his love and passion: music.
In those 12 years since he started in Grade 1 in 2011, he learned his way of being and thinking was not programmed for sitting still and learning the three Rs of reading, ’riting and ’rithmatic.
He also learned that he loved making tunes from instruments from his recorder teacher in Grade 2 at St George’s Prep, and that jazz was a liberating force for his fingers and wandering mind from his piano teacher, the head of the music department at the same school – a truly learner-centred, empowering, inclusive private Anglican school in Gqeberha.
In a two-year stint at Curro in Roodeplaat, where he completed his primary schooling, there was Maxine, another incredibly patient young piano teacher.
In his last five years at Pro Arte-alphen Park School of Specialisation, his passion for piano was honed and musicality developed with hours of practise and tutoring by a team of dedicated teachers from the music department led by Martie van Vuuren, even during the Covid years of 2020 and 2021.
It is thanks to these incredible teachers in both public and private schools who all had his interests at heart that my son exits the system a confident young man, who had the privilege of finding and developing his passion at a young age and a path for the future that is aligned with the core of what makes him the happiest.
What is most heart-warming and game-changing for me in all the success stories of super-achievers is the hands, hearts and minds of thousands of dedicated teachers, principals and parents in school governing bodies and homes who have ensured that so many children have a chance at tertiary education.
Out of the 881,219 public school matric population, it is no mean feat that 174,676 pupils attending quintile 1 to 3 schools (the poorest schools) achieved bachelors passes. These children, with access to bursaries, will have an opportunity to pursue higher education to careers and skills that will significantly improve their lives – as long as tertiary institutions and NSFAS follow through with timeous payments and psychosocial support networks.
I am purposefully focusing on paying tribute to the guardians of our children’s futures as opposed to the broken bureaucracy and misgovernance of basic education because it’s time to shed light on the torchbearers of hope rather than the gravediggers of despair.
Our lead story this week is about these game-changers in schools across our country who are truly making a difference through innovation, passion, dedication and love. These school leaders are living proof of what award-winning former principal and academic Dr Bruce Damons intimated when he said that the best schools are not just those who produce good matric results, but those who produce great human beings.
And good human beings are what our country needs most of all.