John Luis, head of academics at ADvTECH Schools
One in five students across all of the ADvTECH group’s IEB schools attained A aggregates, while one in four Crawford students attained A aggregates, and at Crawford Sandton, that number is 1 in 3. A pass rate of 100% and a Bachelor Degree Pass rate of 95,3% was achieved across all of ADvTECH’s IEB schools.
We spoke to John Luis, Head of Academics at ADvTECH Schools, about what these particularly impressive results really mean. “A strong measure of our academic success is the percentage of students able to pursue a pathway of choice after matric and graduate successfully,” he says, sharing stories of former students’ local and international success. The tertiary achievements of former ADvTECH students has culminated in partnerships between schools and universities: for example, Ivy League universities make an annual recruitment visit to Crawford schools.
Eleven students from the ADvTECH group seem to have particularly bright prospects: ADvTECH’s top student, Maria Traub, achieved an average of 95,1% across all of her subjects, while Joshua Jankelow from Crawford Sandton and Bella Gosnell from Crawford La Lucia attained 10 distinctions each.
Is there a secret to this level of achievement? “The quality of teacher is the most important factor impacting student success,” says Luis. “Teachers must be highly respected and treated as professionals.” For this reason, ADvTECH places a strong emphasis on teacher development and training, which is can be tailored to individual teachers’ needs. Reflecting on the development of education in South Africa at large, he sees this a key component to achieving growth and improvement in learners’ results. “Moving forward, we need to ensure that we maximise our efficiencies with regards to teacher development and training as the quality of the educator is the most important ingredient to academic success,” he says. With that being said, however, it’s more clearly more difficult to implement change such change on a countrywide scale, and Luis believes that the Department of Education is aware of the innovation needed but faces a struggle with its practical application. For the moment, “the reality is that the gap between the public schooling system and private schools such as ADvTECH schools is widening and as a result parents continue turning to private schooling in South Africa. ADvTECH is able to ensure that it keeps abreast with ongoing changes to the global educational landscape ensuring that their standards and practices are amongst the best in the world.”