Melkbos High gets top results

The Western Cape Education Department has dished out 53 awards in 12 categories to schools for improvement and excellence in the department’s systemic tests held last year in October.

Melkbos High, in the category for schools with enrolments of less than 600, scored an award for overall improvement among its Grade 9s.

Systemic tests measure the performance of pupils in language and maths in Grade 3, 6 and 9.

Education MEC Debbie Schäfer said: “A quality education enables people to gain access to an improved quality of life, and a better chance of employment, or the chance to create employment for others.

“A quality education starts with all pupils having mastered literacy and numeracy at internationally benchmarked levels, with their education having included information literacy to prepare them for the modern economy.”

She said the systemic tests conducted have shown the department their interventions were working, and that the quality of teaching and learning in Western Cape schools was improving.

“The maths results last year were particularly pleasing, the pass rates increasing from 2014 by 3.6% in Grade 3, 7.3% in Grade 6 and 7.3% in Grade 9,” she said.

Just over 229 715 pupils from 1 495 public and independent schools in the province wrote the systemic tests and 6114 pupils from 89 independent schools also took part.