10 distinctions and off to US

ECSTATIC: Leah Mackay, left, and Meghan Boroughs, cousins from De La Salle Holy Cross College, celebrate their top-class matric results yesterday.

ECSTATIC: Leah Mackay, left, and Meghan Boroughs, cousins from De La Salle Holy Cross College, celebrate their top-class matric results yesterday.

Published Jan 4, 2012

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NONTOBEKO MTSHALI AND ANGELIQUE SERRAO

T HERE’S the cream of the crop – and then there’s Meghan Boroughs. The De La Salle Holy Cross College pupil, who’s been top of her class for as long as she remembers, yesterday became the top matriculant in the class of 2011, scoring 10 distinctions in the Independent Examinations Board (IEB) exams.

Meghan, 18, is one of the 8 281 private school pupils who passed the 2011 IEB exam, giving the board an almost perfect score for the second year in a row – with all those who passed qualifying to be admitted to study at tertiary level.

Last year, 98.15 percent of IEB Grade 12s passed their final exams. This is a slight decrease compared to 2010’s pass rate of 98.38 percent.

Private schools in Gauteng topped the list of achievers, with 42 pupils in the province being recognised for outstanding achievement.

KwaZulu-Natal had 10 pupils recognised for outstanding achievement.

The IEB results are the first to be released, and will be followed by tomorrow’s release of the results from government schools.

In a statement released yesterday, the IEB said they were concerned about the drop in the number of pupils taking physical science as a subject in Grade 12. The glimmer of hope was the increase in the number of girls taking physical science – up from 45.5 percent in 2008 to 47.4 percent in 2011.

IEB CEO Anne Oberholzer said the high achievement of the IEB pupils was due to parents encouraging their children, and teachers responding with dedication and passion to the challenges they face.

Education specialist Dr Graeme Bloch agreed.

“It’s about all the stakeholders working together,” Bloch said.

“Presumably, though, it’s also about the learners, who have resources like textbooks at home, although research has shown that if you take a child from a poor township and put him in a top school, he will also do well.”

The dean of education at the University of Johannesburg, Sarah Gravett, said: “I’m never surprised at the good IEB results. But we must remember this is a very small proportion compared to the majority of learners in South Africa.”

She said it would be unfair to compare private schools to public schools, simply because of the difference in numbers.

While just more than 8 000 pupils wrote the IEB exams this year, more than 600 000 public school candidates wrote the National Senior Certificate exams.

“If you compare the top layer of public schools to the IEB, then a different picture emerges. You would see that the top public schools are in fact doing very well.”

So what’s in store for Meghan?

Come September, she will be heading to the Big Apple, where she has been accepted to study politics at Columbia University.

“For a long time I’ve wanted to go to a university in America. Columbia has always appealed to me because of the location… I love New York. When I found out that I had been accepted to study there, I was so excited,” she said.

Brains clearly run in the family. Leah Mackay, Meghan’s cousin, bagged seven As in her IEB subjects. Like Meghan, she also wants to pursue her studies in the US and will know by March whether she has been accepted.

“I want to study medicine,” she said.

Leah wants to come back to South Africa afterwards and work with Doctors Without Borders.

More achievers u Pages 3, 6 & 7

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