Headmaster's Address
‘Built to Last’ might have been a popular mantra but ‘Build to Adapt’ is the way to go. At the start of 2021, we took the teachings of The Choluteca Bridge (The Bridge of The Rising Sun) and focused on the need to build a school that can adapt to change. The Theory of Evolution: Charles Darwin in his studies found that “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change”.
As Headmaster I am conscious of the great honour it is to take responsibility for your child’s education and, working alongside an extraordinary team of staff, we are totally committed to helping each of our students to achieve their academic and personal goals.
We believe that education is the foundation upon which a compassionate, successful, and forward-thinking society is built and that our duty as educators in today’s constantly changing world is to prepare our students to face global challenges with the intellectual skill and personal confidence necessary to succeed. We adhere to and promote St Peter’s College vision; “Empowering Students for Life”.
However, I wanted to start by thanking you all as parents and carers for your fantastic support over the last 18 months. I am particularly appreciative for everything that you have been doing to support learning from home when the need arose. I know how difficult it is to juggle working from home with supporting your own children with their schooling, and this is of course in addition to dealing with all the normal challenges of family life. The College has also received several messages of thanks and support from so many of you over these past few months, and these are all received very gratefully indeed.
I would like to thank once again all the teaching staff who have continued to work exceptionally hard to ensure that our students are able to continue with their studies. I hope that your children have found accessing the work via the Teams platform to be straight-forward and helpful. As said previously, although nothing can replace the impact of students being in school to receive the direct instruction and immediate feedback from their teachers, the use of the Teams platform has enabled us to provide the students with the next best thing.
Over the course of the last three months, the College has quite literally sprung into life. A few days of warming temperatures with a little sunshine have banished memories of winter, encouraging us all to be increasingly optimistic about the future. When planning for the 2023 academic year, with the launch of our move towards a sense of “normality”, I am delighted to be able to report that the news is mostly extremely positive. Due to popular demand, we have opened another class in the Grade 8 group to meet the demand for places at St Peter’s College. With this healthy interest at all points of entry, including Grade 9-11, there is every expectation that the College will receive its biggest contingent of new students in its history when we open for the 2022 Academic year in January.
Campus Development: On the back of these confident predictions, the St Peter’s College Council granted authorisation to move to the next stage of planning and preparation for an exciting new capital development, the first significant investment in our academic infrastructure since the onset of COVID-19 in 2020. The building of our new state of the art Maths Centre has already begun in earnest next to the Administration Block to meet the demand for the growth in student numbers. Further expansion to the infrastructure of our school, is the Indoor Basketball and Multipurpose Hall to accommodate the growth in student numbers, as well as the popularity of basketball at St Peter’s College. We look forward to the development and success that this hall will bring for sports and recreation at the College, for which building will commence in January 2021. Besides the Maths and Basketball Centre, there are a number of exciting projects that are still in the pipeline, such as the swimming pool and squash courts.
The K60 extension is finally becoming a reality. The K60 is a 4 lane freeway that will bypass the school linking the end of Van Der Bijl Rd in Sunninghill to Allendale Rd in the North by way of spanning the N1, K101 (Old Pretoria Rd) and the Jukskei River. This freeway build contract is due to be awarded imminently with site mobilisation planned for before the end of the year and will take 18 months to build.
I strongly believe that instilling values such as hard work, self-discipline, and a sense of responsibility within a positive and forward-thinking working environment plays an essential role in our quest to provide our students with a well-balanced, integrated education. Our curriculum is based upon an innovative teaching and learning methodology which, inter alia, focuses on developing fluency and confidence in the academic sphere, promotes a wide range of co-curricular subjects including Music, Sport and the Arts and incorporates cutting-edge technologies. This broad and balanced approach is underpinned by continual reinforcement of our core values and principles, which we believe to be fundamental to the education of compassionate, well-educated, motivated, and responsible young adults.
Staff Matters: Each term brings positive change. This includes a few additions to our staff:
- IsiZulu - Nelisiwe Msomi will come into a full time IsiZulu post to replace Zandile Dube who retires at the end of 2021. Zandile was in a part time post but due to the growth in the College numbers and in students taking IsiZulu as a subject, we needed to appoint a teacher in a full-time capacity.
- Visual Arts – Juanita Viegas joins the Visual Arts department in place of Alex Trapani. We have been very fortunate that Alex extended his resignation to the end of 2021 to allow us to appoint the right candidate.
- Social Science – Kevin McCarthy was on a teaching practical at St Peter’s College in Term 3 and has been appointed to teach Social Sciences in the place of Tebogo Maneli.
- Information Technology – Nontobeko Sangweni returns to the St Peter’s College IT department after a stint at Reddam Helderfontein.
- Afrikaans – Rose Koffman was appointed as an Afrikaans teacher to meet the growth in the College numbers. Rose joins us from The Hill High School.
- Social Science & LO – Aamir Samaai is a teacher at Curro in Krugersdorp who will be teaching History and LO
- Accounting – Shelley Elias joins the Business Studies team and will be teaching Accounting.
- School Shop – Cath Dracatos replaces Nerina Deeb who retired at the end of October 2021 after 14 years of dedicated service. Cath has stepped down from her role as HOD of Business Studies.
- HOD of Business Studies – Vuyelwa Kekana replaces Cath Dracatos as Head of Department.
- Business Studies - Alumnus Victor Hiemstra has resigned to go back into full time studies, and he will be replaced by Marsha Webber who is returning to South Africa after teaching at an international school in Chile.
- Mathematics – Evelyn Naidoo joins the Maths department to replace Leslie Reddy who is moving to Steyn City School.
- Grade Head Assistants – Congratulations to Dylan Hayes (Grade 8) and Daya Lutchman (Grade 12) who have been appointed as Grade Head assistants.
- Sport – We say farewell to Michael Backus who has been an integral part of the sports department for over a decade as he is emigrating to the UK. Alumnus Matthew Amner and Coach Samantha Mposi will be joining the sports team in 2021.
Please join me in welcoming the new staff to the College in 2022.
As we now approach the end of what has been a rather strange year, and in view of the recent announcements from President Cyril Ramaphosa pertaining to the latest COVID-19 variant, Omicron, I focus on a message a fellow Head wrote to parents with children at her school to highlight that 'times are tough at the moment', 'with our mental health taking a battering' and praising parents for what they are doing to get by. She said: "Whatever your personal circumstances, you are doing a great job. If your child has had lots of microwave meals, stayed up too late, played too much on the Xbox and not finished all their schoolwork, THAT'S OK!” I am very mindful that these continue to be unsettling and difficult times for students, staff, and parents. However, through working together so positively over these recent months we have demonstrated just how much can be achieved within such a cohesive, assured, caring and supportive community such as ours, and from this we should continue to draw much strength.
Management of COVID-19: As mentioned in my previous communication: “It remains our policy to take a calm and considered approach, as we respond to this unfolding challenge. We are committed to being proactive and we will communicate all planning with the College community. The past few days has again seen an escalation in the spread of the virus, both in South Africa and around the world. I know that you will all understand that the objective remains the health and safety of our students and staff, in line with the advice and guidance of the relevant authorities. As further decisions are taken by the Government, we will continue to keep you informed of our plans and strategies as promptly as possible. These are very uncertain times, with an unclear roadmap, the next step is for us to implement the plans as best we can, and constantly evaluate our deliverables against the milestones we set and have the courage to course correct when required. The 2022 academic year could be affected, but we will do our best to ensure that your child’s education is interrupted as little as possible for the remainder of the year. I wish to extend my sincere thanks to you as parents, the staff and the students for your co-operation.
In conclusion, I thought I would mention the developing educational debate concerning ‘resilience’, about which there has been a great deal written in the press. There appears to be general evidence that reliance on mobile and email contact, an increasingly ‘cotton-wool’ lifestyle and a heightened aversion by society to appropriate risk, have all meant that modern teenagers are less resilient and robust in the face of real pressure and challenge than they used to be. That notwithstanding, I am not at all sure that our students conform to this stereotype. Here at St Peter’s College we will continue to strive to provide opportunities for boys and girls to test themselves, both as individuals and against others, through healthy competition and to increase confidence by involvement in a wide range of activities. A strong community such as ours can offer the encouragement to ‘put one’s head above the parapet’ and ‘have a go’, overcoming the fear of failure that can stifle creativity and limit the acceptance of responsibility.
Finally, it’s my hope and prayer that you enjoy this festive season with all the love, peace, and fun there is in the world. I wish you all a very blessed Christmas and look forward to seeing you in the New Year.