Cape Recife High School has done it again, producing a stellar set of matric results despite the challenges faced by its pupils.
The Summerstrand special needs school, an inclusive education school focusing on supporting pupils with barriers to learning, celebrated a 91% pass rate in the National Senior Certificate exams in 2025.
Thirty-six of its pupils wrote their matric exams.
Principal Erica Maritz was excited about the results.
“Three of our learners are currently in East London being rewarded for excellence in their results.
“I am very proud of all of our matrics.”
Cape Recife supports pupils with a variety of conditions, including dyslexia and ADHD, as well as those with language and mathematics difficulties.
Maritz said Cape Recife was proud to teach the CAPS curriculum, allowing its pupils to write the same exams as their peers at mainstream schools.
“Some learners come to school and get their therapies here and they often get placed back into the mainstream schools.
“Others stay with us right through to matric.”
Basic education minister Siviwe Gwarube mentioned the importance of inclusive education in her speech at Monday night’s matric results announcement in Johannesburg.
“Inclusive education is an important quality test.
“The number of learners with special learning needs enrolling for the NSC exams has improved, increasing by 57%.
“This progress is not only in participation, but in achievement,” Gwarube said.
“Significantly more learners with special education needs wrote, passed and achieved admission to bachelor’s studies in 2025.”
Maritz said she was happy to hear the minister discussing special educational needs.
“I get very excited because for a very long time nobody really recognised our school, or schools like ours.
“Probably about five years ago we started getting a foot in the door, and people started realising that we give learners the ability to achieve though they have barriers to learning.”
One of the top achievers in 2025 at Cape Recife was Valentino Vogel, who got two distinctions, for English Home Language and Afrikaans First Additional Language.
“I have many opportunities for this year,” he said.
“I want to study computer science, and I am also planning on starting my own woodworking business.”
Brandon Loock had an interesting path to matric.
He joined Cape Recife High School in 2022 with a grade 10 practical qualification and wanted to complete his NSC.
He then had to repeat grade 10 before continuing with the mainstream CAPS curriculum.
Brandon was attending the provincial top performers award ceremony on Tuesday, but Maritz said she was extremely proud of the hard work that he had put in.
“Brandon worked so hard.
“To come from a practical grade 10, and then to move over to mainstream CAPS and achieve his matric is phenomenal.”
The Herald
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.