In 2017 Kingsmead College learners garnered 232 distinctions and the matrics achieved a 100% bachelor pass
Just off the ever-busy Oxford Road, Kingsmead College is partially hidden behind the sea of hi-rise buildings mushrooming in Rosebank. Founded in 1933 by Doris Vera Thompson, its doors opened to 136 girls in 1934. Today the school has about 900 learners, all girls.
Over the years several properties adjacent to the original were purchased, providing space for the steadily increasing enrolment. It is clear from the many plaques around the school that many alumnae have maintained contact and provided support. Fully-equipped music rooms, and pristine gardens. There’s an almost divine calm about the environment, but this was still in the school holidays, and headmistress Lisa Kaplan says this changes to an exciting buzz as the learners return.
Kingsmead has accumulated prestige and honours as one of the top-achieving schools in the country. In 2017 it managed to achieve 232 distinctions through the hard work of both the learners and teachers, and the matrics achieved a 100% bachelor pass. Kaplan, who has been at the helm for a decade, acknowledges that not all girls wish to attend university, but a bachelor pass does offer increased opportunities in life.
She adds that Kingsmead is one of the few institutions that do not have a senior entrance exam that prospective learners need to write. Rather, a personal interview is conducted, where strengths and weaknesses are discussed. Over the years there has been increased emphasis on the entrepreneurial programme to help the girls acquire experience in running their own businesses and attaining independence.
In past years the matriculants were inclined towards the health sciences, but increasingly accounting, actuarial sciences and various forms of engineering are becoming as popular. Kingsmead has a cutting-edge curriculum, where robotics and coding are offered in the “Geek Girls” Club.
The college recently introduced an intensive research skills programme in grade eight. “This research programme encourages the critical thought process, and make it habit not only to ask, but to ask the relevant questions,” says Kaplan. In grade nine, the philosophy for children course is added to cultivate what the headmistress calls the “growth mind-set”. This philosophy proposes that a different understanding of phenomena may yield different results, an excellent foundation for creating the critical thinking that the world now requires.
Even as a school steeped in the Christian, Anglican tradition, there are certain universal values adopted by the multi-faith community of Kingsmead. Service, courage, possibility, happiness, purpose and responsibility are the glues that bind the girls to becoming successful individuals, but with a much-needed consideration for others. There is also a strong focus on maintaining balance between modernity and tradition.
Kingsmead is aligned with SSP (student sponsorship programme) and educates four learners a year through this programme. As part of community engagement, the school has a service programme, where learners are involved with various charities around the city. “Fight with Insight” is a boxing club in Hillbrow that has a symbiotic relationship with the school; the girls are able to attend self-defence classes in exchange for doing their bit.
The school alumnae are busy in a multitude of fields and carry on with the tradition of contributing positively to one’s environment. Topaz Page-Green is a model and the founder and president of the non-profit corporation The Lunchbox Fund. Founded in 2005, the fund provides one meal each day to 22 000 underprivileged high school students, totalling more than 2.6 million meals a year.
Kaplan says it is an incredible honour be part of creating top-achieving learners, but the true success stories are the “most improved learners”: those who show little aptitude initially, but go on improve vastly and then to excel.