News
7 January 2013
Dear Cedar House community
STATEMENT: 2012 GRADE 12 MATRIC RESULTS
Cedar House is interested in educating the whole child, in focusing on a rich range of opportunities for thinking and growing. Our School is committed to far more than results and believes that it is fallacious for us to judge ourselves only on this dimension. It is, however, important that our students perform well in external examinations and that our academically ‘top’ students perform in such a way that they have access to selective University courses; this has happened in 2012 and I am very proud of our Grade 12s and of their teachers.
It gives me great pleasure to share with you the wide-ranging and substantial academic successes of our 2012 Grade 12 group. Our School is a proud member of the Independent Examinations Board (IEB), an examining body that assesses at internationally comparable and rigorous levels, that assesses high order thinking skills, that predicts tertiary success in a credible way and that allows our student to be part of a strong performing sample of close to 9000 candidates who are at many of Southern Africa’s leading independent schools.
Our Grade 12s’ performance integrated an IEB requirement that a substantial Research Task (exposing students to the process of research, making them aware of the importance of an appropriate research methodology and debating ethical aspects of research) was completed; the topic was self-chosen.
Over 30 of our Grade 12s participated in the Advanced Programme English and Mathematics courses offered by the IEB, and benchmarked as equivalent in demand to UK A-levels, providing aspirant learners with an opportunity to dig deeper.
Julia Laurie was our star performer and achieved results that place her in the top achieving group, nationally. 140 students out of the sample of 8959 have been ranked in the top 5% of learners in 5 or more subjects; Julia is one of them!
Some highlights:
- Julia Laurie achieved 8 distinctions, Lara Evans and Callum Fraser achieved 6 distinctions, Megan Weber and Amy Simons achieved 5 distinctions, Sean Baron, Sean MacPherson, Megan Malherbe and Ashleigh Pote achieved 4 distinctions and the following students achieved 3 distinctions: Ayesha Adams, Conor Engelbrecht, Mutaalib Gaffoor, David Traub, Jaidan Rumboll and Richard McLean
- Julia achieved in the top 1% of Afrikaans candidates, Lara in the top 1% of Life Orientation candidates, Nikita Batlis in the top 1% of Mathematical Literacy candidates and Amy in the top 1% of Visual Arts candidates
- 77% of our candidates achieved Bachelors Degree passes
- Half our Afrikaans candidates achieved more than 60%
- 4 Core Maths candidates achieved distinctions with another 3 achieving 79%!; 25% of Maths candidates achieved As or Bs and 69% of Mathematical Literacy students achieved distinctions
- 6 out of our 10 Dramatic Arts students achieved distinctions
- 32 out of the 56 English candidates achieved distinctions or Bs
- 28% of History and Life Orientation candidates achieved distinctions
- 10 out of the 29 Advanced Programme English candidates achieved distinctions
- 10 out of 21 Visual Arts students achieved As or Bs
- 22 out of 46 Life Sciences students achieved As or Bs
- 3 out of the 6 Xhosa candidates achieved As or Bs
- 2 out of the 3 Accounting students achieved an A and a B
Congratulations to our Staff and our Grade 12 class of 2012; you did us very proud indeed.
I am reminded, in conclusion, of a story told by one of our 2011 matriculants who is currently enrolled for a BSc at the University of Cape Town. In the context of being disappointed at having received 76% for English and 79% for Physical Sciences, hereby missing symbols he had been aiming for, he said, “…but the truth is that I could not have wished for a better schooling”.
Yours sincerely
FRANK RUMBOLL
Principal