Grow by leaps and bounds
MAGIC FORMULA: DEEP KNOWLEDGE OF SUBJECT IS A JOB REQUIREMENT
Your chilld’s marks could mirror the success of the Edify schools.
Learners of all aptitudes can benefit from extra lessons. Academic extension centre Edify’s results are testament to this. On average 2022 matric learners’ marks went up by 16% from the time they first joined an Edify school to their final matric results. If a learner scored 80% in their last maths exam before they joined Edify, they would have scored 96% in the final matric exam.
Husband and wife team Wynand and Gemay van Heerden proves that it pays to be good at maths – their local small business Edify has flourished and learners at Edify schools have seen their marks improve phenomenally.
Edify was launched seven years ago as an extra-lesson school. The Van Heerdens quit their day jobs – Wynand was a manager at KPMG and Gemay a teacher. When the first school opened in January 2017 it had three learners, with Gemay teaching maths.
Today it employs 29 people with four schools in Gauteng and an online international school. By the end of 2024 it will have opened three more schools in the Western Cape and will have in excess of 50 staff members.
There are currently schools in Houghton, Bryanston (Hurlingham) and Bedfordview, Lynnwood in Pretoria, as well as its online school. In July 2023 an Edify school will open in Cape Town near Rondebosch and Newlands, and in January 2024 a new school each will open in Stellenbosch and Paarl.
All schools offer teaching for the international Cambridge (IGCSE), Independent Examination Board (IEB) and South African National Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) curricula, with lessons in maths, physical sciences, accountancy, and additional language isiZulu and Afrikaans. Learners range from 4 years old to Grade 12. Lessons are an hour long (half an hour for preschoolers), once or twice a week and the teacher-to-learner varies from 1:3 to 1:6 depending on the subject and learner’s age.
How it all started
“We rented a small three-bedroom historical house in an office park in Houghton as our school where we secretly lived for the first year. We put a bed in the one room, which I covered with a tablecloth and told people was the school’s sickroom,” she says.
“We kept our clothes in a kitchen cupboard. We would leave and turn off all the lights and sneak back in at night so security didn’t see us.”
The turning point was in June 2017 when Gemay ran a workshop before a grade 8 exam. She offered the six learners the chance to invite a friend, expecting 12 children – 72 children showed up. “My goal was to have 100 children at the school and by August 2017 we’d reached my target,” she says
At the end of 2017 they employed another teacher, moved into a separate home and converted the garage into a fourth classroom. In January 2020 they moved into a bigger space in the Houghton Estate Office Park, had five full-time staff and opened the Bryanston school just before the first Covid-19 lockdown.
The international online school launched later that year (catering predominantly for clients who’ve emigrated and their friends), while the Pretoria school opened in mid-2021 and the Bedfordview school in January 2022.
“We continued to grow during the pandemic. We let parents know what was happening with their children’s education,” says Wynand.
Their Foundation Phase maths programme launched this year and is aligned to the advanced level of preschool maths in Singapore and China.
Gemay developed a play-based programme that instils a love of numbers.
This year the school also initiated a comprehensive year-long teacher training CSI programme in teaching methodology for a group of student teachers from the University of Johannesburg.
The secret to success
They only hire graduates with a deep knowledge of their subject matter – mostly experienced teachers or engineers and applied mathematicians.
“Teachers have to be approachable, passionate about their subject and have an ability to transfer that passion to the learners,” says Wynand.
According to Gemay, “Our teacher-to-learner ratio is small enough to ensure each child gets differentiated learning tailored to their level of readiness for particular tasks. The children also learn from each other – you will often find one learner helping another and they both benefit from the exchange. They bounce off each other’s energy. Our students love attending the lessons, they love the interactions with the other learners and teachers, and they develop a passion for the subject they’re studying.”
At the end of each year the school circulates a survey to parents to rate its services. One of the questions is how often they have to force their child to attend lessons, with a five being never – and for six years the score has been an almost perfect five.