Lavender Hill High School in Cape Town boosts matric pass rate by 20% in two years

The class of 2025 at Lavender Hill High School in Cape Town has achieved a matric pass rate of 89%, up by 20% from 69.2% in 2023. Principal Fuad Viljoen told Daily Maverick that the achievement was the product of hard work and determination.

The school had already increased its matric pass rate to 80.3% for 2024, even as its throughput rate – the number of pupils who stayed in school to the end of their matric year – increased steadily.

Viljoen, who has a South African flag pinned to the wall of his office, said: “We are fiercely and passionately South African, and our DNA, I think, is a bit different to other nations. Adversity actually makes us stronger, actually pushes us to persevere and excel, and that’s the true spirit of being at Lavender Hill High School.”

The entire team at Lavender Hill is responsible for its success, from the teachers to the administrative and estate staff, to the counsellor, said Viljoen. Everyone played their part in bringing about the change in results.

“What normally happens is that the Grade 12 teachers get all the credit. But it didn’t start in Grade 12. It started in Grade 8... where teachers play a role in the success of these learners by laying the foundation,” he said.

Read more: Lavender Hill High’s matric success stories show how a community school can overcome adversity

Of the 130 matrics from Lavender Hill who wrote the 2025 National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations, 51 achieved a bachelor’s degree pass, up from 32 in 2024.

Top achiever

The pupil with the top results from Lavender Hill’s class of 2025 was Sandiego Ruiters (19), who described the achievement as a “winning feeling”. The moment his name was read last on the list of top achievers at the school on Tuesday had been an emotional one.

“I feel excited... Before I found out I was a bit nervous because this is the first time for the class of 2025 that I’m [ranked] first,” he told Daily Maverick.

The path to matric was difficult for Ruiters. In 2021, when he was 15, he was shot in a drive-by shooting outside his cousin’s house.

“[My cousin] was supposed to send me a game on the phone so that we can play, and we were sitting in front of his house when there was a was a drive-by shooting incident. It wasn’t gang members from the area that we were used to seeing, so it was people we didn’t know and people who didn’t know us. They just took a chance and assumed that we, as 15-year-old kids, were gangsters,” he said.

He describes the incident as a case of “wrong place, wrong time”. He missed a year of school while he recovered.

“I just tried to focus on the positive, because why would I want revenge if I get to live my life happy? And look what I’ve achieved,” he said.

As a pupil who struggled with studying, Ruiters said he needed to try a few different strategies to find what worked. In the end, reading the material out loud was best, since he learns through listening.

“I see myself as a good listener... That is why I know majority things that I know,” he added.

Ruiters has applied to the University of the Western Cape and Cape Peninsula University of Technology in the hope of studying tourism management or towards a bachelor of education with a focus on geography.

“I’m looking for a stable life. They say dream big and you can achieve big. My thing is, I’ll just keep it realistic. I’m just hoping for a stable income, stable life, stable family.”

He expressed appreciation for his mother, a single parent, for always being there for him.

“[My mother’s] been supporting me since day one. I owe a lot to that woman, so I’m just here to make her proud,” he said.

Planning for success

In preparing the class of 2025 for the matric exams, Lavender Hill High arranged for all the pupils to attend additional study sessions for an hour after school each day, and from 8.30am to 2pm on Saturdays. Sandwiches and fruit were provided after school, while a meal was prepared for the Saturday sessions.

“We had one of our teachers who made a huge pot of food every Saturday morning and that’s how we found that we can keep [the matrics] here. That is how actually we won them over,” Viljoen said.

“In terms of the contact time [with the matrics], I would attribute the huge jump in the result to those extra hours that our teachers and learners put in.”

Lavender Hill High places strong emphasis on the importance of education, explained Viljoen. He described it as a “generational school”, since many pupils have parents, siblings or even grandparents who attended the school.

“I get the sense that this community is extremely proud of this high school, because this is the only high school in Lavender Hill,” he said.

“We make it quite clear to our learners that... the minute you set foot on the property of Lavender Hill High School, we adhere strictly to the code of conduct in how you must behave. And the main thing that we always emphasise is respect for adults.”

Withstanding adversity

Viljoen estimated that in 2025 there were about three days when gang violence affected operations at the school.

“It becomes difficult to manage... because what happens once there’s a shooting in the community while the school is in progress is that parents tend to... run to the school to come and fetch their child,” he said.

While the school aims to maintain lessons during these periods, in line with Western Cape Education Department expectations, Viljoen noted that “you can’t run a normal school when outside the school the situation is abnormal”. When a shooting occurs, he sometimes arranges to end the school day earlier, in consultation with the local circuit manager.

“Then I will phone [the South African Police Service] and law enforcement, and I can say to you, I had fantastic support from them. If I tell them, ‘We I would like to dismiss the school by 1.30pm’, then they are present in front of the school [when pupils leave],” he said.

Viljoen noted the challenges and traumas that some learners were exposed to in the Lavender Hill area, which faces high rates of gang violence and substance use. He often reminds teachers that they have no way of knowing what a learner might be going through outside of school.

“Teachers don’t even know what [pupils] are going through at home. There are many times when I’m informed that the only meal they will have for the day is what they will receive at our feeding scheme,” he said.

“For a learner at a community school like this – and there are many other communities that are similar to us – just reaching matric is an achievement. But as a school, we’re not only happy for a learner to be in matric. We want that learner to excel, and many of them excel.” DM