WCape's No 1 'can't believe it'

2007-12-28 16:31

Cape Town - The matriculant who took the top spot in the Western Cape with the best overall results couldn't quite come to grips with the news on Friday.

"I can't believe I'm number one," said 18-year-old Amori Engelbrecht, of Bloemhof Girls High in Stellenbosch.

"At the moment I'm a bit shocked, but I also feel truly blessed. It's a gift."

Engelbrecht was speaking at an awards ceremony in the grounds of Leeuwenhof, the official residence of Western Cape premier Ebrahim Rasool, where it was earlier announced she had achieved seven distinctions and an average of 112.2%.

The reason some pupils achieved more than 100 percent, an education department official explained, was that they got bonus marks for doing more than four subjects on the higher grade.

Amori, whose mother is a physiotherapist and whose father lectures in industrial psychology at the University of Stellenbosch, said she would be going to the university next year to study medicine.

She said she studied English, Afrikaans, German, maths, accounting, biology and physical science.

"It was always a little pressured, but the school supported me very well," she said.

Amori was one of 16 young women among the top 23 matrics in the province. Five of them came from Stellenberg, a girls' high school in Cape Town's northern suburbs.

Ten distinctions

In the number four spot was 18-year-old Ruhan Meyer, from Hoër Jongenskool Paarl, who cracked ten distinctions, the highest number in the province.

He said he studied English, Afrikaans, maths, additional maths, physical science, accounting, biology, computer studies, music, and music performance, specialising in the saxophone and piano.

"I'd say my favourite subject was mathematics," he said. "I just enjoyed it."

He said his teacher, Christa van der Westhuizen, had had a "passion" for the subject.

Asked whether he had had time for anything else during the year, he said: "Yes of course. I played some golf...."

He intended to study physics at Stellenbosch.

In addition to the awards to the top 20 achievers, premier Rasool presented a special award for "meritorious academic achievements from historically disadvantaged contexts" to Xola Mtshisa, who studied at the Cape Academy for Maths, Science and Technology.

Special permission

Mtshisa passed with six distinctions and an average of 102.4 percent.

The province's deputy director general for curriculum management Brian Schreuder told guests that the department had secured special permission from tribal chiefs for Mtshisa to leave his initiation school in the Eastern Cape early, to attend Friday's ceremony.

Rasool said that despite a three percent drop in the province's pass rate, from 83.7 in 2006 to 80.6% this year, there was much to celebrate, including the narrowing gap between historically advantaged and disadvantaged learners.

"We are very, very happy that the Western Cape has come out tops," he said.

The fact that thousands of matrics passed despite the 30-day teachers' strike and subsequent haggling about payment for a recovery plan was a major tribute to learners, teachers and officials.

"Whatever our viewpoint about the correctness of strikes in sensitive areas like education, it does remain a democratic and constitutional right to strike by teachers," he said.

He said the impact of the strike had been greatest in Cape Town's Khayelitsha, where the pass rate dropped from 76% last year to 62% this year.

"This has interrupted the trajectory Khayelitsha was on of increased overall pass and endorsement rates," he said.

Zola High

One exception there was Zola High, which had immediately embraced the recovery plan and was rewarded with a five percent improvement in pass rates to 93%.

Education MEC Cameron Dugmore said the number of Western Cape candidates who passed higher grade maths had declined from 4 137 to 3 990 this year, while those passing physical science on the higher grade dropped from 4 053 to 3 687.

"Improving the quality of passes remains our most fundamental challenge," he said.

Dugmore also noted that the number of schools with pass rates less than 60% had grown from 34 in 2006 to 57 this year - a matter of deep concern.

- SAPA