The 2025 Chronicle

Africa and beyond. Consistently increasing available funding for bursaries and financial aid is going to be essential for Michael house’s resilience and long-term sustainability, and this is the most important fundraising priority for the Development Office. Families and Old Boys who have benefited from financial aid are strongly encouraged, when able, to pay forward and contrib ute to the bursary and endowment trust for future generations to benefit in a similar manner. Michaelhouse is exceptionally grateful and appreciative of the generosity of donors who have enabled the extensive new infrastructure projects you have seen around campus, including the magnificent chapel expan sion, as well as the current assets in the bursary endowment, which support financial aid for approximately 40% of current learners. An impact report will be published at the end of term to account for donations received over the last two years, and deployment of funds across the school and partner schools in our local communities. As we are aware, with privilege comes responsibility, so it is essential for Michaelhouse to partner with and add value to local schools facing profound education and social challenges. The Michaelhouse Community Partnership Trust (MCPT) has expanded its reach over the past year, now working with 10 early childhood development (ECD) centres in addition to 16 partner schools between Lion’s River and Mooi River. This foot print now serves, supports and partners with approximately 7 000 learners and 300 teachers. Recognizing the importance of pre-school learning, MCPT has partnered with Grow ECD, a spe Good afternoon to you all and welcome to our Speech Day 2025, a day on which we traditionally celebrate some of the key events of the year without exhaustively repeating what you already know; this is also a day on which we have a special focus on our matriculants as our chief prizewinners and whom we acknowledge for their many other attributes and qualities. But first I would like briefly to welcome our guest of honour, Ja mie Inglis, who is so well known at Michaelhouse that he needs no introduction, although Tumi Motsepe will, indeed, introduce him properly later. Jamie, thank you for gracing us with your presence on this important day in the life of Michaelhouse and of our matriculants. You have been so central to so much of the growth and development of the school over the years and a great inspiration to many of us, and we are honoured that you have come down to Balgowan for this important occasion. As always, I hope to present to you in just 20 minutes a kalei doscope of the key images of 2025 – not an outdated blow by-blow account of the whole year, but rather a light touch on some significant events which have shaped our school over recent months. And there is no more obvious place to start than with a visual record of our chapel and its extension, particularly since our guest of honour was one of the major donors, along with the Chairman, distinguished guests, parents, staff, men of Michaelhouse.

cialised resource partner to support and improve nearby ECD centres in local communities. Plans are at an advanced stage to launch a literacy development project to improve severe lit eracy challenges, which become a barrier to further learning. Good progress has also been made supporting partner-school leadership development, improving teaching effectiveness, as well as school infrastructure maintenance. MCPT is also priv ileged to be involved with the Simi Maths Programme, led by Paul de Wet and his sister Ruth Hicks, helping to improve maths teaching in disadvantaged schools across KZN and, increasing ly, nationally. We welcome involvement and support with any of these projects, so please do get in touch if there is interest and an opportunity to be involved. In closing, I would like to wish all the matrics success with the upcoming matric exams. I hope all the papers are fair and that you will achieve your objectives in line with your academic and revision effort. Hold on to the values you have learned at Michaelhouse – they will serve you well as you face new and unfamiliar challenges in the next phases of your lives. Contin ue to help others where you can through service, and please remain in touch with your friends, on OM-Plus and at nearby Old Boys events. I would like to leave you with a meaningful quote from George Bernard Shaw. It reads as follows: “A true gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.” I thank you. Bruins, Jonsson, Ralfe, Sacco and Thorrington-Smith families and an anonymous donor. You will perhaps not be surprised that several friends of the school had commented that we would ultimately lose our soul if we were not able to worship together because space did not permit of that unity. And as has happened before in this remarkable school, people stepped forward out of love for what binds us together and out of re spect for what had shaped them, and the best solutions were found. The singing of “Stars of the Morning” by the boys in the beautiful new extended chapel at the re-dedication service raised the roof and brought tears to many eyes. As we gather here this afternoon, the renovations to Farfield are complete and the boys have moved back into a beautiful House; it has been a complicated re-design involving the re location of bathroom facilities into the body of the House and the raising of another roof in the A Block area. But nothing has daunted, or daunts, our brilliant architect, Nick Grice. Nick is retiring at the end of this year, having had the sharpest eye imaginable for all the lines and angles that have contributed to ensuring over the past 30 years that our campus has grown ever more beautiful. We will thank Nick officially later in the year but not before he has delivered plans for West, East and Founders. However, on this occasion we acknowledge his out standing work and express our profound gratitude to him. At conferences throughout the country, alarm has been ex pressed about the dearth of teachers. We are told that 50% of the teachers in South Africa will retire in the next five years,

ADDRESS BY THE RECTOR, MR ANTONY CLARK

25