A school that was once notorious for being a playground for gangs with a high dropout rate, a lack of facilities such as laboratories and often produced poor results has now bounced back to claim an impressive 86.7% matric pass rate.
Kabelo Secondary School situated in Greenside, a bustling settlement near Seshego in Polokwane, Limpopo plays a crucial role in the community, particularly in the extensions 40 and 44 areas.
Serving as an accessible public school, it acts as an educational hub for residents of Greenside and extension areas, offering affordable education.
In the 2020 National Senior Certificate Examination(NSC), Kabelo Secondary School’s matric class achieved a pass rate of 61.7%, which was a slight decrease from the 63.2% recorded in 2019. The number of learners who took the exam increased from 57 in 2019 to 81 in 2020.
Over the period from 2018 to 2020, the school maintained an average pass rate of 59.8%. This year the school was buzzing celebrating the 86.7% matric pass rate.
“We are very humbled and happy that for the first time we were able to achieve such results. We went beyond the set target by the district and we owe it all to dedicated teachers and our wonderful learners,” said principal Paul Mmola.
He said the school showed major improvements in quality subjects such as Physical Sciences, Geography, Mathematics, History, Life Sciences, Accounting Economics, Business studies and Agricultural Sciences.
Mmola added that discipline is the new gospel at the school and that everyday is an engagement day with learners and teachers.
“We are going to continue with our camp programmes, supporting their studies and extra classes with this team of educated and dedicated teachers and we are aiming for 90% and above for the following matric year,” he said.
“Every year we receive a target from the circuit and this year with our group of new and young teachers, we were dedicated to achieving great results. We definitely cannot ignore the impact of our camp programmes which were run throughout last year and extra classes that closed at 7 pm that helped ensure learners kept focus,” he said.
Excited matriculant Kgothatso Sethosa said the learners worked hard to change the community’s perception of the school.
“Our school was underperforming for so long and that was discouraging to a lot of learners. We wanted to change how the community viewed our school and everyone who attends there,” she said.
“The year 2023 was tough. We had a lot on our plates dealing with cable thefts, and loadshedding while studying for our trial and final exams, but we vowed that we could make history and nothing could stop us from doing so,” she said.
Another learner Thato Moholola said there was a lot of ill-discpiline among the learners initally.
“We struggled with a lot of absentees at first but that got resolved by strict warnings and the involvement of parents. We were always remaining after school to study and also did morning study sessions. The teachers made sure we all came to school where they were helping us, starting from Monday to Sunday and we also studied on our own until late,” Moholola said. – news@mukurukuru.co.za
