Teto High School in Thabong near Welkom in the Free State was one of nine schools recognised by the national department of education for “demonstrating sustained improvement in learner achievement in grade 12” for three consecutive years.
A further 36 schools were honoured by the department at its annual “Most Improved School Awards” in categories including mathematics, improvement in home language and English second-language teaching as well as the exclusive 100 club for top maths and science schools.
Teto High School produced 129 passes and 53 university endorsements in the 2007 matric examination. The 2007 pass rate of 90% was up from 74% the previous year. The school is part of the education department’s Dinaledi project. It receives special support from the department to improve the number and level of performance of learners in maths and science.
The principal of Teto High, Mpolai Mchunu, who has been at the school for 20 years, attributed its success to discipline, hard work and unity of purpose among teaching staff.
“The reason we excelled is because we try to be on top of our game by being innovative and setting ourselves clear objectives and targets. It has been our norm that all grade 12 learners should use every available opportunity to do school work. These include studying during weekends, school holidays and using morning and afternoon study sessions,” said Mchunu.
The school’s strategy is to focus on grade 10 and 11 so that by the time learners reach matric they are used to coping with the workload. “Our teachers also make sure they finish their syllabus at least before the winter break so that the second half of the year is dedicated to revision and to attend to other problematic areas,” Mchunu said.
She said the school enlists support from learning facilitators, who provide specialist support and coaching to subject teachers. “These people are knowledgeable and are a rich resource that we decided to tap and this is yielding positive results.”
Because of the widespread poverty in the nearby informal settlement, most learners battle to keep up with their academic work or to buy school uniforms. To help them overcome these challenges, each teacher adopts a learner for one year. “During this period learners would be coached and assisted with school-related work and be given general life skills,” said Mchunu.
The school won a R25 000 cash prize plus a year’s subscription to School Management and Leadership.