FROM THE PRINCIPAL'S DESK

Dear Parents

The Hockey tour to Holland was a great success with our girls winning 6 of their 7 matches. Congratulations to our girls and thanks to Mrs West and Mrs Shaw.
The Netball coaching tour to Wellington went well and our girls learnt a great deal. We are grateful to Mrs Kingwill who accompanied the girls. Well done to all the girls who represented the School in various sports during the holidays. We are very proud of you.
The Bleed held at the School on the last Wednesday of last term was a great success. Thanks go to Laura Smith for her excellent organization. This is to become a regular event. We would like to challenge parents to come along and join us.
The All Girls Sport and Cultural Festival will be held in East London from the 26 until 29 April. Parents are welcome to support us.
As you are aware there are many public holidays during the course of this term:
Friday 22 April to Tuesday 3 May
18 May has been declared a public holiday.
16 and 17 June (long weekend).

I appeal to you not to take your daughter out of school unnecessarily or to make appointments during the school day as she cannot afford to lose this time. It is important that you do not allow your daughter to stay at home when exams have finished because we use this time to go over the papers and do remedial work.

PLEASE NOTE THAT ESSAY EXAMS ARE BEING WRITTEN ON THURSDAY 21 APRIL AND FRIDAY 13 MAY AND FORM PART OF THE JUNE ASSESSMENT MARKS.

We welcome the following new staff:
Miss Coetzee who will be teaching Arts and Culture and PET. Mrs Booyse has rejoined the staff and will be teaching Mathematics.
A reminder that should you have any queries or problems relating to school issues please contact me (collegia@cghs.co.za) or one of the senior staff.

Hope you will have a good break over the long weekend. A happy and blessed Easter to all those celebrating this holy day.

MRS F BIGGS
ACTING PRINCIPAL

Jesse February, Chanele van Zyl and  Sthuthi Varghese took part in the George Frangoupolis Open Chess Tournament on the 20 March. Jesse won the A section with a score of 3½ out of 4 and Chanele was chosen best girl player with a score of 3½ out of 4. Congratulations to all three girls.

We congratulate Aidan Battison on earning a Bronze medal at the South African Junior Championships in the triple jump. She achieved a personal best in all six of her jumps ending with an improvement of 40cm on her previous best! What a superb ending to a brilliant season for this young lady!

Our 1st team squad enjoyed a highly successful coaching clinic in Wellington. The coaching was excellent and the girls learnt many new skills. They had excellent match practice against stronger teams which will stand them in good stead for the coming season. According to Mrs Kingwill, it was a pleasure to take these motivated girls on tour. Our thanks go to Mrs Kingwill for giving up her time during her holiday prior starting at her new school in Johannesburg this term. The Netball girls will certainly miss her.
We congratulate Thalitha Tshangela on her performance at the SAU18 Netball Championships held in Cape Town. The East Cape team ended 10th out of 24 teams. Well done Thalitha!

The U14A team travelled to East London at the end of last term to participate in the annual U14 Rob Taylor Hockey Festival. The U14A Hockey team are fortunate to have a former South African Hockey player, Andrea Marais as their coach. They managed to do extremely well and achieved the following results:

Collegiate u14A vs Cambridge u14A 3 – 0 (won)
Collegiate u14A vs Hudson Park u14A 0 – 0 (drew)
Collegiate u14A vs Stirling u14A 3 – 0 (won)
Collegiate u14A vs Clarendon 0 – 0 (drew)
Collegiate u14A vs Woodridge 5 – 0 (won)

Miss Kerrigan would like to thank the following parents for their assistance during the weekend in East London: Mr and Mrs Ambrose Paulsen; Mr and Mrs Grant Combrink; Mr and Mrs Peter Giddy and Mrs Terry Billson.

JOINT FIRST PLACE, QUEEN MARY HOUSE AND QUEEN ALEXANDRA HOUSE.
THIRD PLACE QUEEN ELIZABETH HOUSE
FOURTH PLACE QUEEN VICTORIA HOUSE.

The annual Collegiate Challenge was held towards the end of the first term and the results are now available. There were three groups participating: the U14 age group who were all beginners, and the senior age group who were separated into beginners, and experienced divers who were taking part in their third Collegiate Challenge.

U14:

Gold: Rezanne Lubbinge
Silver: Tayla Krog
Bronze: Chanele van Zyl

Senior Beginners:

Gold: Callan Schroeder
Silver: Kiona Sequeira
Bronze: Jordyn Simon

Senior:

Gold: Kimberley Wilson
Silver: Megan Wilson
Bronze: Siseko Dastile

Congratulations to the winners and well done to everyone who took part. We hope to see you all in the new season!

We congratulate the following Collegiate swimmers on their results from the South African Level 3 Swimming Championships held in Durban recently:

Michaela Barnes:
3 Bronze medals
Mu’Minah Connelly:
1 Silver medal
Tarryn Els:
2 Silver medals
Kirstyn Fourie:
1 Silver medal
Genna Greevelink:
2 Gold medals
1 Silver medal
Jessica Liss:
3 Gold medals
1 Silver medal
1 Bronze medal
Megan van Wyk:
1 Gold medal
1 Bronze medal

Jessica was the only Eastern Province swimmer to qualify for the World Championships to be held in Peru in August. Well done Jess!

We have been approached by MySchool to encourage our parents to use their MySchool cards as often as possible. This is a wonderful opportunity for parents to help raise funds for the school without any effort or cost. All you have to do is swipe your card at any of the partner stores. If you wish to apply for a MySchool card or update your details, please login through the link on our website. If you wish to change the beneficiary on your card, please phone the toll free number 0860 100 445.

The top ranking school for the last quarter was Pretoria Boys High School which earned R12 015. If we were able to raise that amount of money per quarter, we would be in a position to build more classrooms or upgrade our sporting facilities within a very short period of time. We encourageyou, therefore, to have a MySchool card - with Collegiate High School as the beneficiary - and to use it as much as possible.

Look at all the wonderful opportunities offered by MySchool by visiting our Website link, www.collegiatehigh.co.za, and do not delay in signing up.

For many years, The Collegiate Chat has appeared every fortnight and has been the prime means by which parents are kept informed of activities at Collegiate. Since its inception, however, the world has become an ‘online’ one and increasingly we find much duplication between the "Chat" and our website.

Forthwith, we will be reducing the number of "Chat" newsletters issued per term and increasing the use of the sms notification system and The Collegiate website as prime purveyors of information. Please visit our website regularly and should you not yet have signed up to receive the "Chat" via email, please do so, as this will enable us to email to you any notices of information that might be issued between "Chats".

The next "Chat" will be issued on 20 May.

A very BIG thank you to all who gave to the Justinspired Campaign during this past term. We managed to (donate)give R6500.00, (lots of) stationery, 6 computers and printers, 2 laptops, sports equipment, clothing, a library full of books, textbooks and school books as well as enough shoes to meet the needs of one high school!

Justin Hines will be in Port Elizabeth over the Easter weekend to close off the project and will be performing on Sunday at the Splash Festival. This will be his only concert in South Africa and we encourage you to get down there are see and hear the incredible man and song that inspired this whole project. "Say what you will" reached Number ONE on the Algoa FM charts this weekend!

If you have more goods – books, clothes and computers, please don’t hesitate to contact Miss van Rooyen and she will make sure these items find a good home! Thank you again for your giving spirit and incredible desire to help others.

After an absence of a number of years, this inter-school competition was brought back this year and Collegiate entered two teams. The questions were based on the content of the Herald of the 10 days prior to the completion.

Our A team did very well, winning the first round and the quarter finals in their section. In the semi -final they lost by one point to Muir College, who went on to win the competition. Our A team was placed jointly third out of 39 participating teams. Congratulations!

The teams were:
A Team:
Lauren Dixon-Paver; Thushya Pillay; Hannah Maybery; Megan Barker; Ashleigh Hein and Courtney Lynch

B Team:
Ashleigh Glover; Caitlyn Field; Nosipho Nyembezi and Valeska Roelofse

After a whirlwind 14 day tour of Holland and Paris, the 1st Hockey team is looking forward to starting the 2011 season.
These are the results of the matches played in Holland.

Match 1 vs Barendrecht won 3 -0
Match 2 vs Tempo 34 won 6 -0
Match 3 vs Rotterdam U16s drew 1 -1
Match 4 vs Ommoord won 4 -0
Match 5 vs Boxmeer won 2 -1
Match 6 vs Civicum won 5 -1
Match 7 vs Almeer won 8 -2

The highlight of these matches was that the girls scored many field goals, and the penalty corner worked so well that it could become a match winning factor this season.
The Dutch are very skilful hockey players and often at half time we were on level scores or 1-0 up. It was only in the second half when we outran the opposition that we pulled away to produce these fine results.

Apart from the matches, highlights of the tour were:

1. Sightseeing and shopping in Amsterdam and visiting the windmills on bicycles on a dyke called the Kinderdijk.
2. A boat cruise around the Rotterdam Harbour which is one of the busiest harbours in the world.
3. A coaching session at Rotterdam Hockey Club with Mark Knowles - the Australian men’s National captain.
4. Visiting the Kroller-Muller Art museum and riding through the forest on bicycles.
5. Skiing and snowboarding lessons and free time to ski or snowboard.
6. A three hour train trip from Rotterdam to Paris on one of Europe’s fastest trains - the Tullis which travels at around 500kms per hour.
7. Shopping and sightseeing in one of the most beautiful cities in the world - Paris.

1. QUEEN ELIZABETH HOUSE 246
2. QUEEN VICTORIA HOUSE 190
3. QUEEN MARY HOUSE 182
4. QUEEN ALEXANDRA HOUSE 173

Last weekend Interact hosted children from EP Children’s Home, Sakhikaya Letembe and Abantwana Abashle homes. Delicious pancakes were made by some of the Interact girls and a few hours were spent playing twister, jumping on the jumping castle and having soccer matches. The juice and water went down quickly because of the lovely warm day and all left exhausted but happy. A big thank you to all the girls that participated and especially Zoë who organized the morning.

Dear Parents and Girls of the College

“Dead or Alive?”

Despite increasing membership, the OCGG is dying a slow death. Why? It is because of little or no active contribution from the younger Old Girls who are reluctant to join the guild or to be part of the committee.  This could be due to work commitments, lack of time or no interest.  The OCGG has a constitution dating back 50 years and has been a vital part of the Collegiate for a hundred years.   NO-ONE wants to see the guild fade away but that is what is happening.  The only way then to stay “alive” is to change how the guild is run.  Our proposal is as follows:

We propose that it is run by an individual employed by the guild and supported by a volunteer committee.  This will turn the guild into a viable arm of the school and something exciting to belong to.  Other measures to increase the relevance of the guild would involve the following:
 
1. Membership
We have for the past ten years been charging R100 for life membership and R75 for matrics if they sign up when they leave.  This money along with the “Cakeless cake sale donations”, a little profit made from the Founders’ Day dinner and the odd donation from old girls has kept the OCGG going with their few functions for the year ie: Seniors Tea & the Matric Luncheon.  However, any viable business needs funds to improve. We propose to increase the membership fees to R200 per member per year.

What will the member get in return for this investment?
At present there are newsletters, information and invitations to Old Girl functions, Founders’ Day activities and access to the website.  The intention is to increase the benefits by, for example, offering Old Girls’ the opportunity to advertise their businesses on a link to the Old Girls’ website.  This web site could also be useful for accommodation & guest house requirements, for career and social networking and to facilitate sales and swops.  Some sites could have a nominal fee, others, could be there for free.  These are just a few of the services that will be made possible with a full time employee looking after the database, web site etc. News will also be readily available at all times.  NO-ONE will be left in the cold.

2. Fundraising Events
Because the guild will be “another arm” of the school, fundraising will be a large and important part of what the OCGG and its members will be involved.  Funds could then be used as follows: to assist children who are in financial difficulty; provide equipment for the school; provide facilities to showcase Collegiana; and to support any other needs that arise.  It will be vital for members to become involved in the fundraising for these projects and in return they will reap the satisfaction of knowing they have contributed to a worthy cause.

Dear OCGG members, we have so many wonderful ideas as to how the OCGG can go ahead and become something to be admired and something every Collegiate Girl will be proud to belong to. However, we need everyone’s approval and input and we are asking you all please to consider what we have proposed. Then, come back to us with your ideas as to how we can become a strong and respected organisation, on an equal footing with our brother school.  Ladies, the future of the OCGG depends on you.

Please email your comments and ideas to cherylthompson26@gmail.com.

Best Regards
Cheryl Thompson (OCGG President)