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Home / Windhoek High excels in Grade 12 Higher Level
Windhoek High excels in Grade 12 Higher Level
2017-12-21Staff Report 2 Albertina Nakale Windhoek-Windhoek High School has regained its status of producing some of the best academic performers, after three of its pupils were crowned as three best students in all six Namibia Senior Secondary Certificate (NSSC) Grade 12 Higher Level examinations for full-time candidates who sat in 2017. Overall, five students did exceptionally well in all six NSSC Grade 12 Higher Level examinations. Larisa Oosthuizen from Windhoek High School scooped the national open scholarship for best overall performance on aggregate score in NSSC Higher Level as well as a prize of N$2,000. Another pupil from Windhoek High School is David Fourie, who got the national prize based on best performance in five NSSC Higher Level subjects, and N$1,200. Maryke van der Merwe, from the same school, also got a national prize based on best performance in five NSSC Higher Level subjects and a N$1,200 prize. The other learner is Lauri Anne Potgieter from Edugate Academy who got the national prize based on best performance in six NSSC Higher Level subjects and N$1,200. Henry Johnston from St Paul’s College received the national prize based on best performance in six NSSC Higher Level subjects and N$1,200. The Education, Arts and Culture Minister Katrina Hanse-Himarwa, who yesterday announced the results for higher level, said the finalization of the NSSC Ordinary Level results (full-time and part-time) is at an advanced stage and will be released early in January 2018. A total of 16,314 from 72,619 Grade 12 candidates (full-time and part-time combined) entered for one or more NSSC Higher Level subject. When compared to the 2016 results, the 2017 results indicate a lower performance at grades 1, 3 and 4, while a drop of 3.1 percent was observed at grade 2. The graded entries reduced with 1.1 percent from 95.5 percent in 2016 to 94.4 percent in 2017. The results show that 65.8 percent of the candidates obtained grade 3 and better, keeping in mind grade 3 is a minimum requirement for admission to university. New Era caught up with some of these overall best performers to share the secret to their academic success. Van der Merwe said she doesn’t have a secret, but worked hard every day. She believes in herself and uses her “God-given talent”, saying she is nothing without Him. “I am very excited. My parents and my friends are a vital role in who I am, my motivation. I prioritize important things first, like they say the big stones you do first, first the important stuff, and then later the unimportant stuff. It is necessary to give up on a few things that you like to do, but it’s all worth it in the end,” she said. She applied at the University of Namibia (Unam) School of Medicine. Johnston said most students get it wrong because they go to school to impress their parents or teachers. “I find that’s not a very good way in doing it. For me I had personal goals that I would try and meet. Doing it for yourself generally means not accepting other people’s standards. If the teacher feels you got 80 percent for a test or whatever you got, and they are fine with that, you have to look within yourself … am I happy with where I am and if your answer is no then it is up to you to go beyond what school is doing for you, to go and find extra material, extra work, get a tutor to find that understanding that the school or the teacher is not giving you,” Johnston advised. He applied in South Africa at the University of Stellenbosch to study mechatronics, which is a combination of mechanical and electronical engineering. He would like to specialize in medical nanorobotics, which is still quite a new field. Oosthuizen said she started preparing for her success in Grade 11. She says Grade 12 is an exciting year with many things such as the matric farewell, but one should never lose focus. She says one must know what one’s goals are, so as not to lose focus when enjoying things. “I mostly work hard on my own, it’s my type of personality. I like figuring things out for myself, so I did do a few extra classes, but not like every day or every week. When I needed help with something like seriously, I did extra classes, but otherwise I like to put in extra effort on my own,” she shared. She applied for a full-time sports course at ETA College in Windhoek because she loves sports. “I have a passion for sports and I am already studying biotechnology through Unisa. I want to do biomedicine to become a biomedical scientist, that’s my dream,” she said. 2017-12-21Staff Report 2
