Message from the Principal

Now that the dust from the start of the New Year has settled, I thought it opportune to reflect on a few aspects of school life and re-focus on what lies ahead.

We are very proud of our Grade 12’s of 2017 who excelled in their IEB Matric exams. Tyger Valley College, once again, achieved a 100% pass rate. Equally impressive is the fact that 69% of our exam results were above 60% and almost half them were above 70% and we improved our distinction rate per pupil to 1,64 distinctions per pupil. Alex Woodbourne and Michael Craig achieved 8 distinctions each, Paige Georgiades and Carla Smith achieved 7 distinctions each, Hanro van der Westhuizen achieved 6 distinctions, Graham Thompson achieved 5 distinctions and Adrian Kotze and Ramtin Mesgari achieved 4 distinctions each. For a Matric group of only 42 pupils, this is quite phenomenal. In addition, four of our pupils were placed in the top 1% in the country in specific subjects (Afrikaans – Carla Smith, Michael Craig & Alex Woodborne; Business Studies – Graham Thompson; Life Sciences – Alex Woodborne & Carla Smith; Physical Sciences – Alex Woodborne & Carla Smith). Alex Woodborne and Michael Craig also received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the IEB for being in the top 5% in the country in 6 or more subjects. What is even more impressive is that of the top 56 pupils who wrote the national IEB exams, seven came from AdvTech schools and two of those seven were from Tyger Valley College!

At Tyger Valley College, we pride ourselves in providing our pupils an education which enables them to think critically and apply what they have learnt to ensure good results. We believe in growing the pupils understanding, interpretative abilities, logical reasoning, deductive skills and many others, as part of the school’s Core Skills programme. Our Grade 9 pupils wrote the IEB Core Skills assessment last year (an assessment which was conducted in IEB schools across South Africa). The feedback from these assessments is very positive. Our pupils achieved above the national average in all skills areas, performing in the 90-100% result category in a significant number of skills (in many cases three and four times higher than the results of the national average). These results are testimony to the fact that our academic programme works towards producing outstanding Matric results.

As a school, we understand that it is imperative for our pupils to develop a solid mathematical foundation. Our Time Maths Centre is focused on mathematical excellence which will be further enhanced through team teaching in strategic grades across the high school. In essence, this amounts to two Maths teachers honing mathematical skills and methods during class time. With Mathematics being such an important subject, we are truly privileged to have this programme included in our school fees and worked into our school day.

As part of our focus on our academic offering, we will be building a Go-Lab this year. The Go-Lab is a high-tech laboratory which we are building in the heart of the academic hub of our high school. It will house state of the art 3D printers and laser cutters and will be a centre for innovation and technology. One can only imagine to what extent this facility will enhance our academic programme (and what better way to achieve this, than by turning teaching and learning into fun). Not only will the Go-Lab be incorporated into our academic day, but will also offer activities in the afternoons such as Drone, Robotics and Inventors’ Clubs. Construction on this project will start shortly and I will send keep our community updated as the project unfolds.

At Tyger Valley College, we believe in a holistic approach to education where academic results are balanced with the arts, the environment and sport. Keeping in line with this balance, construction of our Astro turf will start this term. Our hockey players are already excelling on our grass hockey fields and I can only imagine what it will do for their game when they have their very own Astro. More sporting news is that we concluded an agreement with Swim South Africa (SSA) towards the end of last year whereby our school has been selected as a Swim South Africa – High Performance Academy. SSA has partnered with our school swimming programme with a view to building Tyger Valley College into a school of swimming excellence.

2018 is going to be a year for the record books and we look forward to building rich and happy memories with our community as the year progresses.

Regards

Clyde Mac Donald

High School Principal