The Gauteng Education MEC, Ms Barbara Creecy on 7 January 2010 honoured schools that consistently produce good results. She recognised the sacrifice and hard work of principals and educators who on a consistent basis achieve these results.
What is important is that we are also trying to acknowledge those who have done well under circumstances of poverty, lack of resources and facilities, societal challenges including HIV and AIDS, and others. The schools are divided into quintiles and are also honoured by the MEC for their achievement under difficult odds that schools in quintile five never have to face. Quintiles refer to the level of poverty and lack of resources in each school. Schools that are better resourced are in quintile five, with a gradual decline to quintile one where we find the poorest schools.
The national Department of Basic Education issued policy guidelines for provinces to use in determining top schools. These guidelines include pass rate, number of bachelor degree passes as well as the number of distinctions per school. The criteria were chosen carefully and attempt to strike a balance between the quantity and quality of passes. All schools with a 100 percent pass rate were ranked on the above criteria.
Our country and province has a huge shortage of skills to address the developmental challenges we face. A skilled workforce can make a huge difference to economic growth and consequently poverty alleviation. This means that a school with 10 learners obtaining five distinctions each is a great achievement, and deserves recognition and further encouragement. However, a school with 200 learners and able to produce a high number of good quality passes (bachelor passes and distinctions) is making a bigger contribution on the overall skills development agenda of the country. These are public schools that we want to encourage to continue doing good work.
So in the top 10 schools in Gauteng that have been honoured by the MEC, there are both schools with higher distinctions per learner and those with a high degree of good overall quality passes, but the algorithm used to calculate top schools is biased to the latter group of schools. Based on this algorithm, Waterkloof Hoërskool is the top school in Gauteng as it makes the greatest contribution to addressing the developmental challenges we face.
The hard work and sacrifice of both Afrikaanse Seun and Meisie schools are also recognised as they are placed prominently in the top ten lists.
Please follow the link for top performing schools: http://www.education.gpg.gov.za/Documents/top_performing_and_under_performing_schools-2007_thru_2009.xls
For more information contact:
Charles Phahlane
Tell: 011 355 1530
Cell: 071 860 4496
Issued by: Department of Education, Gauteng Provincial Government
26 January 2010
Source: Department of Education, Gauteng Provincial Government (http://www.education.gpg.gov.za/)
