13 January 2012

Dear Parents

The staff and I would like to extend our very best wishes to you for 2012.  May it be a happy and successful year for you and for your daughters.

A warm and special welcome goes to the parents of our grade 8 girls and to the parents of new girls at the school.  We hope that you will soon feel at home and part of the Collegiate Family.

There are a number of new members of staff to whom I would like to introduce you:

Mrs Karien Loots, who will be teaching CAT, EMS, Accounting and Mathematical Literacy.  Mrs Loots has a BCom degree and an HDE and is a provincial netball referee.  She has taught in Potchefstroom, Bloemfontein, London and Dubai.

Ms Anabel Stindt will be teaching English and the Drama aspect of Arts and Culture. Ms Stindt has a BA(Honours) degree in English and completed her PGCE last year. She has an associate in Speech and Drama teaching and has taught Speech and Drama extramurally at different schools in PE.

Mrs Hayley Carter will be teaching English and is an Old Girl of Collegiate. She holds a BA degree in English, an Honours degree in Psychology, as well as a PGCE. Mrs Carter has taught at Riebeeck Girl’s College and at Collegiate before starting a family. We are pleased to welcome her back onto the staff.

Ms Katherine Owalsky has been appointed as our PRO and Marketing Manager. Ms Owalsky is also an Old Girl of this school and has a Bachelor of Media, Communication and Culture and a PGCE.  She has taught English at Victoria Park High School and been involved with media and marketing in Dubai.  She was also the Campaign Manager of the FIFA World Cup Directorate in PE.

We are also fortunate to have secured the services of Mrs Melissa Riordan, who will be serving the school on a part-time basis as a psychologist, and of two volunteer assistants: Ms Julie McAll in the library; Miss Sarah Fowlds in the Music Department.

                                Left to right: Katherine Owalsky, Anabel Stindt, Karien Loots, Julie McAll, Hayley Carter

My heartiest congratulations go to the Matric Class of 2011 on their outstanding results.  We are very proud of them all.  Thank you to the teachers of Collegiate who have given these girls the best possible education in their 5 years at High School.

We look forward to an excellent year during which every girl will reach her full potential and become fully involved in the School.

MRS M BAGSHAW

PRINCIPAL

STUNNING MATRIC 2011 RESULTS!

Our 2011 matric results were exceptional – a 100% pass rate of the rest of the girls with 94% of the girls gaining access to a Bachelor’s Degree (i.e.  130 of 139 matrics can go to University). Congratulations to:

• Candysse Vrancken - with 8 distinctions (ranging from 85% to 96%)
• Jaid Limbert,  Anna Griebenow, Tarryn Lovemore, Lisa Seymour, Andrea Ward, Shelby Hastie, Trudy van Olm, Senthil Pillay, Lauren Cunningham and
  Lynn van Rooyen - with 7 distinctions
• Robin Malgas, Bronté Morton, Simonn Benjamin - with 6 distinctions
• Aidan Battison, Donna de Jongh, Natalie Collier - with 5 distinctions 

In total, the Class of 2011 achieved 327 distinctions and produced subject averages between 63% and 89%. 
We are, indeed, impressed by every girl’s performance, and encourage each girl to aspire to such great results.

At the start of a new academic year, we would like to stress the importance of attendance at school at all times.  There is a tendency to want to take “extra holidays” around public holidays and to leave school early in the last week of terms.  Please do not allow your daughters to do this, nor to stay at home on a day before an important test.  The curriculum is extensive in all grades, but in the senior grades in particular, and should your daughter indulge in rest days, she will miss out on important tuition.

Please do not schedule medical appointments, driving tests or any other appointments for your daughters during the school day.

One should always aim to work efficiently and communicate effectively.  If we examine the technological world around us, we have to admit that Collegiate has not yet moved into the digital age as far as our communication structures are concerned.  This year we aim to change this and communicate as far as possible via e-forms. This will ensure more immediate communication with all our parents and fits in with our drive to become a fully eco-friendly school by saving on paper.

This edition of the Collegiate Chat is thus being distributed by email only.  If you have received this, you have signed up via our website and we thank you for this.  All newsletters will be distributed via email in future.  Short urgent messages will continue to be sent via SMS. Other ways in which we hope to communicate with you is via the School Communicator, the website and social media such as Facebook.  As we have these systems up-an-running, we will communicate this to you, and for those of you who are slightly technophobic, we do plan to run a workshop to demonstrate the various technologies and to train you in using them.

GRADES NOT INVOLVED ON A CERTAIN DAY, MAY GO HOME AT 13H15.
 

LET'S MAKE THIS EVENT FULL OF FUN AND LAUGHTER!