Many South Africans, regardless of age, experience a deep sense of pride towards the schools they attend. In one of our recent blogs, we spoke with two alumni of The Kusasa Academy, and one can see their faces light up when they speak about their past affiliation with our beloved school. We all fiercely support our academic roots. Which brings us to the terrific news we’d like to share with you.
Each year, the Western Cape Provincial Education Department conducts benchmark testing on all grade 3s at all public schools and participating private schools. Our grade 3s participated in October 2023. This provides us with measurable, objective metrics with which to track our performance and progress as a school in the areas of two key academic focuses: literacy and numeracy.
The 2023 results have just been released and provide fantastic encouragement for the teaching approaches of the Academy.
Some background first: all South African public schools are categorised into five groups, called quintiles. Quintile one is the ‘poorest’ quintile, while quintile five is the ‘least poor’. The Kusasa Academy is classified as a Quintile 2 school, within this grading system. (We are not quintile 1, since we are a fee-paying school – even though the fees we charge to parents only recover 7-8% of the school’s operational costs.)
Of course, if we compare ourselves with other Quintile 2 schools, we will naturally “shoot the lights out”. That’s not terribly difficult to do since many lower quintile schools in South Africa are shockingly under-resourced and over-crowded. Even comparing ourselves against an average of all Quintile 1 to 5 schools across the whole province, we are proud to say we perform excellently.
But the real test or metric that we are excited about is how we compare against the Quintile 5 (Q5) schools in our province. These schools are the best, richest and most resourced schools – which are in great demand from children of the most privileged in society. One of our stated goals is that each child from the under-resourced communities we serve, deserves the very best education, equal to the very best that the rich communities enjoy.
So how do our results compare with those top (Q5) schools?
MATHEMATICS
Average % achieved by learners at all Q5 schools: 62.5%
Average % achieved by The Kusasa Academy learners: 72.0%
We last did this testing with our 2021 Grade 3s:
- In 2021, 52% of our grade 3s achieved 70% or more
- In 2023, 67% of our grade 3s achieved 70% or more
LANGUAGE
Average % achieved by learners at all Q5 schools: 56.0%
Average % achieved by The Kusasa Academy learners: 61.5%
Surpassing Q5 schools in language, even though more narrowly than in mathematics, is more significant than it looks. Most Q5 schools are English or Afrikaans, reflecting the home languages of their learners. This means that their learners have the privilege of being tested and assessed in their home language. Our learners, on the other hand, have been assessed in English, which is not the home language for any of them. So, to still beat the richest schools in our province in this learning area is ABSOLUTELY incredible.
We are so proud to say that The Kusasa Academy continues to break barriers in learning, despite our surrounding socio-economic circumstances. We congratulate both our learners and our teachers – what an fantastic accomplishment. We are so proud of each of you.
Our amazing Kusasa-kids and staff are so grateful for the ongoing support of our donors, who make achieving these numbers possible with their generous donations.
If you would like to contribute to the success of our Kusasa-kids, please consider clicking here to make a donation!
