CAPE TOWN - Athlone school, Silverlea Primary, is beaming with pride after smashing the competition in the virtual Growsmart Educational Programme, walking away with several awards - despite it being their first year participating.
Four of the pupils placed in the first to fourth position in the Literacy Competition category and school principal, Sharon Coetzee, said the achievement spoke to their ethos of teamwork.
Winning pupils Sadiyah Padayachee took first place in the Literacy category while her peers, Luca Alexander took second place, Lyndell Morkel placed in third position and Milani Kamva secured fourth place.
“As a school community it meant that we strive on our motto ‘not for ourselves alone’. Teamwork is an integral part of the school. I believe if everyone does their part it leads to the successes we experienced this year. The learners, mentors and educators worked extremely hard these past few months, in preparation for the competition,” said Coetzee.
After six months of preparing for the competition, Silverlea Primary walked away with R350 000 which Coetzee said will now enable the school to enhance the use of technology.
“We are trying to shift the focus of the school. I believe in the past Silverlea Primary School was focusing on sport and due to Covid this was no longer possible and I had to find ways to shift the focus of the school. One of these was to improve the academic performance of our school.
“Entering the Growsmart competition was one of the new projects we decided to expose our learners to. We never had a functional computer room for our learners, and it was part of our school improvement plan for 2021,” said Coetzee.
The school intends entering more categories next year and will motivate pupils to always reach for the stars.
“As a school community we are extremely excited. To all our learners: never forget that it doesn’t matter where you come from, what matters is where you are going. Believe in yourself, stay disciplined and focused. Set goals for yourself; apply yourself to become the best version of yourself.
“Remember hard work and diligence always pays off. Remember: life is a journey; you are going to make mistakes and fail sometimes, the key is to never give up on your dreams. Always believe in yourself, you’ve got this,” said Coetzee.
This year, for the first time since the Growsmart Educational Programme inception, the competition was held entirely on a digital platform where more than 17 000 learners used the online learning platform from which 2 077 pupils across three provinces including the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and Limpopo, entered as contestants.
Cape Times