The 2023 Chronicle

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

ADDRESS BY THE RECTOR, MR ANTONY CLARK

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t is a great pleasure and privilege to address the AGM of the Michaelhouse Old Boys’ Club as there is such a close bond between the club and the school, and the school benefits so much from the interest, sheer hard work and generosity and support of you Old Boys. Particular thanks go to Wayne Witherspoon and Sean Lumley, who have steered the club so enthusiastically and energetically over the past year. The Michaelhouse of today is a school of 625 boys with a waiting list of boys who are warming the bench and hoping to come in to play. This makes us a little larger than the formula which is that Michaelhouse should have ten Houses of 60 boys each, and I can assure you that we do not have plans to become a school of 800 or even 700 or even 650 and thereby lose what is the quintessential Michaelhouse, where people are known. But we are in demand at a time where a number of our feeder prep schools have reduced in size as a result of emigration or semigration and we need, as always, to seize the day. The school was 550 five years ago, so we have grown by 70 plus, and this has required more classrooms and, to some extent, more facilities. One such facility is the Makan Centre, built with a generous donation of an Old Boy who has more than made good in the Silicon Valley. It is an exciting area where technology is king and which is always full of boys working in groups, solving problems, collaborating, inventing and creating. Every 40 to 50 years a proper boarding school needs to assess its boarding facilities to see if it is in line with similar schools. An honest appraisal of ours led to the view that we had fallen behind world-class standards in this respect, and we needed to recognise this. But simultaneously came the recognition that boarding houses generally take a year to renovate and the school therefore had two alternatives: one was the creation of a horrible, functional and surprisingly expensive grey pre-fab building on, let us say, Baileys or Willows, an eyesore for a number of years; or to plan to move a House into a new building and to fulfil a strategic objective in doing so of having a Housemaster on site, as in all other Houses. As you will know, Tatham was the House chosen for an upgrade and, though some Old Boys will have fond memories of their time in Tatham, the new Tatham, with its plans for more modern facilities, has been a development which the current Tatham boys have welcomed with alacrity. Pascoe will be the next on the list for renovation, and then Farfield, and those boys will move into the old Tatham during the time of their own House renovations. Ultimately, all of our Houses will be brought up to the expectations of parents in the 2020s. At the time of the Board meeting in March, we named the Dloti Quad in honour of Themba Dloti, who lost his life in the 2017 bus accident, and his father, Thabo, who served as Board member and vice- chair for many years. The plaque commemorating this is on the steps leading up from Baines into our new quad.

One of the key features of the past months has been the way that Brendan Gittins, as Deputy Rector: Pupils, has worked in tandem with Sibusiso Ncamani, Deputy Rector: Pastoral. This duo has handled a range of situations in an extremely capable way: low-level discipline has been tightened up and some very challenging major matters have been deftly handled. Both have communicated exceptionally well with each Block in a new venture called the Block Connect. This is all about boys understanding the expectations of them in terms of behaviour and the follow-up when things have not gone well, as well as praising them when everything is on track. We have also worked hard on raising standards and expectations in terms of manners and the conduct of boys, including table manners. We recognise that there are different cultures and, therefore, somewhat different approaches to interactions with others, but there are also some basic norms which need to be adhered to. The golden thread running through Michaelhouse is the thread of academic success: in most years over the past decade, we have outshone our rivals, and our boys go on to prestigious universities here in South Africa and also in the UK and the USA. An interesting feature of last year and 2023 is that the dux of last year, Peter Woodland, is the brother of this year’s Head Prefect, Andrew Woodland. We believe this is a first! We have seven new full-time or part-time teachers this year. Kalipha Cele, a Geography teacher and enthusiast about many things, has joined us from Northwood High School. He has played and coached cricket at a senior provincial level. Dale Lynch is our new Head of Geography, and she has taught in a number of schools in the UK and South Africa. Angela van Wyngaard is a new Mathematics teacher and was head of maths at Epworth. Christopher Felix is the new Head of the Accounting Department, having come to us from Union High in Graaff Reinet, where he was head of accounting, head of sport and senior housemaster. He has also been head coach for the national U18 rugby academy side and has been involved at Craven Week level. Xolisile Mzinyane was formerly head of isiZulu at Treverton and has joined us in this capacity. Claire Hornby taught English outstandingly well at St Mary’s Kloof and The Wykeham Collegiate and is with us on a part-time basis. Richard Johnson, who was an intern last year, is now a full-time teacher in the Economics Department and coaches hockey and cricket at an A-team level. All in all we have a strong staff in both the academic and co-curricular area and are proactively on the search for excellent teachers to join us. On the whole, our sports teams have done themselves proud this year, remembering always that the majority of the opponents against whom we play are schools of upward of 1,000 pupils. Admittedly, a First XV win over Hilton has been elusive up to now. Without going into every detail, our senior rugby teams have

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