St Martin’s School – Rising above every challenge
THE 2020 matriculants at St Martin’s School have produced a set of results that is nothing short of incredible, despite a very difficult year of Covid-related restrictions and online learning.
The students weathered the storm of the Covid-19 pandemic that disrupted their academic year and rose above every challenge thrown at them.
Two matriculants from St Martin’s were placed in the top 1% of IEB candidates nationally - Letani Keyter for Afrikaans and Life Orientation, and Isabelle Moore for Life Orientation and English.
While St Martin’s is always excited about the top results, there was much reason to celebrate as apart from the 100% pass rate, 95% of its pupils were awarded a Bachelor’s pass, which means they can further their studies at a university.
The other two astounding results include 76% of matrics achieved As, Bs or Cs, and a staggering 84% of the pupils achieved an A, B or C average.
In terms of depth, one other result is worth mentioning. If you take all the marks of all the pupils in all the subjects written and you calculate the average, you get 70%.
Many pupils achieved their personal best results and have every reason to be as proud of their achievements as those pupils who obtained a string of distinctions.
St Martin’s subject averages, in comparison to national averages, is another statistic that is worthy of mention. Of the 19 subjects offered at St Martin’s, 13 were above the IEB national average. These included Accounting (18%), Visual Arts (13%), Drama (6%), French (8%), English and History (4%), and Engineering Graphics and Design (16%).
The school commended all students in the 2020 matric class for their tenacity and determination, and celebrated all who have done themselves and their parents proud by achieving their best results possible.
St Martin’s Top Achiever, Isabelle Moore said she was pleased with her results.
“I have been working for my dad while waiting for the results to be released, mostly bookkeeping. I want to study actuarial science because it seems like the perfect combination of all my interests. It’s both maths as well as analysing things and coming up with creative ways to solve problems,” Moore said.
Ciara Ah Ling also achieved seven distinctions. She said she started dreaming about becoming a vet soon before her dog died.
“He was constantly very ill and I felt helpless. I know how much an animal means to an owner, and how badly they are treated at times. My ultimate dream is to help end animal cruelty by using what I can learn for good. I want to eventually work at or even own my own shelter or rehabilitation centre, directly caring for the animals,” Ah Ling said.
Thendo Mudau, who narrowly missed out on seven distinctions, said that as a young child, instead of watching cartoons on television, he used to watch National Geographic and the Discovery Channel, and fell in love with astronomy. One day, his daily viewing led him to a show produced by neuroscientists that likened the brain to a mini solar system. This, coupled with the fact that his mum is a nurse, sparked his interest in becoming a doctor.
Mudau is hoping to study medicine at the University of Cape Town.
LIVESTOCK theft is costing the South African economy about R1.4 billion annually, said Willie Clack, the national chairperson of the National Stock Theft Prevention Forum (NSTPF).
As a result of the damages caused by this crime to the agricultural industry, NSTPF said it would always consider livestock theft as “serious” irrespective of decreases in the crime.
“It does have a serious impact on people,” he said.
Despite the fact that Police Minister Bheki Cele, in his 2020/21 crime statistics report, indicated that livestock theft declined by 6.9 percent, farmers, especially in the Free State, Eastern Cape and Western Cape, still sleep with one eye open.
Clack said the more commercial farmers suffered livestock theft the more the meat or dairy industries were at risk of losing their production and business.
The weakest link in the security chain were unsecured borders between South Africa and its immediate neighbours, such as eSwatini and Lesotho. Farmers are unable to recover their animals once they cross the porous borders.
Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions has also expressed its concern about the crime’s economic impact on its 12 member states. Chief executive Ishmael Sunga said livestock theft robbed commercial livestock owners of their income and capital assets.
He said as a result farmers and other related businesses, such as dairy and meat products producers, have been forced to reduce the number of their employees.
“If it was going to be put on the market and generate sales, it basically means that there is not sufficient revenue going to the government. If it is going to cause shortages of meat, the price of meat is going to go up,” he said.
Sunga said he could not outline the extent of the problem in the organisation’s member states, except for South Africa where AgriSA provides information on a regular basis. “It (livestock theft) is numbered (in other member states) but is not high up (on the list of challenges).”
He said among less industrialised farmers in southern Africa, livestock theft had hit hard. “If one steals cattle, which are used for many purposes, particularly on the smallholding farms, the owner’s world is stolen because they are not able to plant and plough on time,” he said.
In December last year it was reported that livestock theft and poaching had cost Eastern Cape farmers more than R260m. Free State farmers were estimated to have lost hundreds of millions of rand.
Free State Agriculture Safety and Risk Analyst Dr Jane Buys said: “If you do a calculation of the replacement value of a sheep and the replacement value of a cow, it is between R30 million a month and R50m a month. When we did an estimate three years ago, we also came to over R1 billion."