How does a school which achieved the lowest NSC (national senior certificate) results in 2023 turn around its fortunes nine months later by almost doubling its percentage pass rate?
For most of last year I had a ringside seat to this remarkable experiment in courage and I am delighted to share what this school did to overhaul its academic reputation and scholastic performance.
As always, it starts with leadership.
This school had a relatively new principal who on receiving the bad news (35.9%) was obviously devastated, but then stood up and said: “we are going to turn this school around”.
She pulled together her teachers and two powerful things in combination: she gave them high levels of support and demanded high levels of accountability.
That support came in the form of instructional guidance, counselling services, material provisions and technological assistance.
Resource networks around the school witnessed the energy and wanted to be part of the experiment — a huge, state-of-the-art digital screen in the main hall to data projectors for individual teachers.
The principal literally sat in the classes of some teachers and gave them direct feedback in her office shortly afterwards.
In other words, this principal was not simply an administrative leader, but also an instructional leader to her teachers.
But she knows that the single, heroic leader story of corporate textbooks is nonsense.
Effective leaders work in teams, and I marvelled as she built the senior team of deputies and a now strong school management team.
They sang from the same hymn book and together, in the early-morning briefing sessions, gave the team of teachers their marching orders.
Scores of supporters came through the school every week from subject advisers to social workers to parent supporters to pastors to IT network consultants to teacher experts from outside in specific subjects.
That is the village it takes to change a school.
Late into the afternoon, almost every day, leading teachers came to assist from mathematics to the life sciences and the resident teachers sat in workshops for them and in classes for the children. It was a sight to behold.
However, you can give a school all the resource support in the world, but if they it is not held accountable for results, you are wasting money.
I watched in amazement as the principal sat the grade 12 teachers around a table after every term exam and asked the same three questions of every subject teacher: What went wrong?
How are you going to fix the problem? And what do you need to improve your subject marks?
Trust me, sitting through these accountability sessions was riveting, even tense, but notice the implication of the last question: I am not asking you to do more without giving you the means with which to do it.
This is the key to effective change in organisations such as schools.
Led by a data-driven approach to change, the school dug deep into every data point to explain examination performance and refine the strategy for change.
For example, in the previous year, the school promoted about half of the pupils into grade 12, which explains in large part the measly 39.5% pass.
For this year (2025), all the incoming grade 12 pupils passed on their own — no extra marks or promotions unless you qualified.
For that reason alone, I believe that at the end of this current year, this school should obtain a 100% pass.
This principal is one of the best leaders I have ever encountered in SA education for a simple reason: she can inspire her followers to do the impossible.
Where management is about aligning resources to achieve results, leadership is about firing up people to do what they would otherwise avoid.
As a result, the teachers of this school worked harder than most and there was seldom a day when there were not after-school classes or holiday classes and weekend classes and more.
As a critic of government, I was pleasantly surprised to see how the department of education supported the school.
Not so much with material resources (there was, of course, some of that) but through moral support, encouragement, direction and expertise.
One subject adviser was so enthused by what he saw that he started to teach a class, and I enjoyed watching a master teacher in action.
When the school leadership picked up the phone, the department arrived with the necessary support from the life sciences to the languages.
The MEC for education in the province made an early morning visit to the school to take in the changes and signal support for the principal; the director-general and his senior assistant were available at the drop of a hat for advice and support.
This is how education support is supposed to work, everywhere.
Because of this comprehensive strategy for change, the pupils responded by bringing their A-game to the classroom.
The children are always the dependent variable; what they do depends on what the teachers put into their lives---and it worked beautifully.
In a brief talk to the staff on Tuesday after the excitement of the announcement of results, I told my colleagues that the magnitude of this change within a single academic year was possible only because of leadership.
Then it happened. They all got up and gave the principal a standing ovation that seemed to go on forever.
This is how you change a school, SA.
How to take a school from zero to hero
Columnist
How does a school which achieved the lowest NSC (national senior certificate) results in 2023 turn around its fortunes nine months later by almost doubling its percentage pass rate?
For most of last year I had a ringside seat to this remarkable experiment in courage and I am delighted to share what this school did to overhaul its academic reputation and scholastic performance.
As always, it starts with leadership.
This school had a relatively new principal who on receiving the bad news (35.9%) was obviously devastated, but then stood up and said: “we are going to turn this school around”.
She pulled together her teachers and two powerful things in combination: she gave them high levels of support and demanded high levels of accountability.
That support came in the form of instructional guidance, counselling services, material provisions and technological assistance.
Resource networks around the school witnessed the energy and wanted to be part of the experiment — a huge, state-of-the-art digital screen in the main hall to data projectors for individual teachers.
The principal literally sat in the classes of some teachers and gave them direct feedback in her office shortly afterwards.
In other words, this principal was not simply an administrative leader, but also an instructional leader to her teachers.
But she knows that the single, heroic leader story of corporate textbooks is nonsense.
Effective leaders work in teams, and I marvelled as she built the senior team of deputies and a now strong school management team.
They sang from the same hymn book and together, in the early-morning briefing sessions, gave the team of teachers their marching orders.
Scores of supporters came through the school every week from subject advisers to social workers to parent supporters to pastors to IT network consultants to teacher experts from outside in specific subjects.
That is the village it takes to change a school.
Late into the afternoon, almost every day, leading teachers came to assist from mathematics to the life sciences and the resident teachers sat in workshops for them and in classes for the children. It was a sight to behold.
However, you can give a school all the resource support in the world, but if they it is not held accountable for results, you are wasting money.
I watched in amazement as the principal sat the grade 12 teachers around a table after every term exam and asked the same three questions of every subject teacher: What went wrong?
How are you going to fix the problem? And what do you need to improve your subject marks?
Trust me, sitting through these accountability sessions was riveting, even tense, but notice the implication of the last question: I am not asking you to do more without giving you the means with which to do it.
This is the key to effective change in organisations such as schools.
Led by a data-driven approach to change, the school dug deep into every data point to explain examination performance and refine the strategy for change.
For example, in the previous year, the school promoted about half of the pupils into grade 12, which explains in large part the measly 39.5% pass.
For this year (2025), all the incoming grade 12 pupils passed on their own — no extra marks or promotions unless you qualified.
For that reason alone, I believe that at the end of this current year, this school should obtain a 100% pass.
This principal is one of the best leaders I have ever encountered in SA education for a simple reason: she can inspire her followers to do the impossible.
Where management is about aligning resources to achieve results, leadership is about firing up people to do what they would otherwise avoid.
As a result, the teachers of this school worked harder than most and there was seldom a day when there were not after-school classes or holiday classes and weekend classes and more.
As a critic of government, I was pleasantly surprised to see how the department of education supported the school.
Not so much with material resources (there was, of course, some of that) but through moral support, encouragement, direction and expertise.
One subject adviser was so enthused by what he saw that he started to teach a class, and I enjoyed watching a master teacher in action.
When the school leadership picked up the phone, the department arrived with the necessary support from the life sciences to the languages.
The MEC for education in the province made an early morning visit to the school to take in the changes and signal support for the principal; the director-general and his senior assistant were available at the drop of a hat for advice and support.
This is how education support is supposed to work, everywhere.
Because of this comprehensive strategy for change, the pupils responded by bringing their A-game to the classroom.
The children are always the dependent variable; what they do depends on what the teachers put into their lives---and it worked beautifully.
In a brief talk to the staff on Tuesday after the excitement of the announcement of results, I told my colleagues that the magnitude of this change within a single academic year was possible only because of leadership.
Then it happened. They all got up and gave the principal a standing ovation that seemed to go on forever.
This is how you change a school, SA.
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