The Chronicle 2022

MESSAGE FROM THE RECTOR

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and will be opened in March 2023. We have also added four new classrooms adjacent to the Pennington Quad to cope with the increased numbers of boys in the school. Joni Warburton, Financial Director, has overseen the finances of the school and her innovative approach and attention to detail have been of great benefit to Michaelhouse at a time of steeply rising prices in building materials, fuel and elsewhere. Ground has been broken in the building of a new Tatham which will preface the further development of Pascoe, Farfield, Founders, East and West in order to bring all the boarding facilities up to a world class standard within the foreseeable future. The school has worked very closely with the Old Boys, led by Wayne Witherspoon and Sean Lumley, continuing to make a significant impact on the well-being of the school. Sean Lumley gave generously of his time to inspire a giving day which built on the association of Old Boys through OM+ and led to financial support for several projects, including a commitment to our Community Partnership Trust and the sixteen schools in our vicinity which we support. Two new Deputy Rectors started in their roles during the course of this year: Sibusiso Ncamani, formerly Housemaster of East and Brendan Gittins, previously Deputy Head at Jeppe High School for Boys. They have both made a significant impact in their roles and, inevitably, several staff left us at the end of 2022 to go on promotion: Dean Forword and Mark Blew to Uplands College as Deputy Heads and Paul McKay to Clifton College in Durban, also as a Deputy Principal. We wish them well in their new roles and also welcome the fact that this has provided new opportunities for current staff to gain promotion. Four new Housemasters will start at the beginning of 2023: Herman Visagie in Founders, Doug Rodger in Farfield, Matthew Higginson in Baines (Richard McMichael having stood down) and Paul Snyman in Ralfe. The grounds remain beautiful and we are very grateful to all those who support the school: Old Boys, parents and other benefactors who give selflessly of their time and resources to ensure that a wonderful environment is created in which Michaelhouse boys may learn and grow.

he year recorded in the Chronicle, 2022, marks the beginning of the return to normality following the enormous upheaval of Covid-19 over the past two years. Despite the many complexities associated with those years, the boys of Michaelhouse demonstrated resilience, particularly in the academic area, where some very good results were recorded for the matric group of 2021. We started the year with the good news that our boys averaged 3.1A symbols per student with 100% achieving a bachelor’s pass and an average per subject per boy of 75%. It was noteworthy that matrics in the first XV achieved 84% per subject per boy, surely an unrivalled success rate throughout the country! With our new Houses, Ralfe and McCormick at capacity, we commenced the year with 626 boys (up from 550 in 2018), the highest enrolment ever and, though there is no desire to grow bigger, the extra enrolment provided us with more fire power in several areas such as in our sport. The development of the High Performance Centre has further led to our boys being fitter and in better condition than in the past and this, in turn, enabled the boys to achieve significantly improved results in all sports, but especially in rugby where our lower teams were often able to bring home the bacon against much larger schools. A weekend rugby/hockey winter fixture with St John’s was aborted after an allegation of a racial slur made by one of our players in the first XI hockey match. This led to a very difficult situation for a number of reasons not the least of which was that minors were at the heart of the matter and two schools, rather than one, were involved. Despite some thinking otherwise, the matter was conscientiously tackled with our board being engaged in discussions, as well as a smaller group comprising the outgoing chairman, the incoming chairman, specific board members, legal advisors and a PR Company all playing important roles. As Anglican and Christian schools we have started to make good the ground lost and will continue to do so in the years ahead. 2022 has been another year in which we continued enhancing the campus through projects: the most notable of these has been the development of the Makan Centre, funded by the generosity of the Makan family which spans Pietermaritzburg and the Silicon Valley. This is a hub for academic innovation

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