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Rose Act Students Live up to Expectations

Rose Act Saturday School held its annual awards day on Saturday, November 28th 2015, an event that concluded another excellent year for the school, now in its 25th year.

“We believe that excellence should be rewarded. It provides a goal for our children and they love being recognised and receiving certificates and trophies. It’s a great motivational tool,” explained Louise Cameron, the project’s co-ordinator. Over 430 people, including students, parents, tutors, committee members and volunteers, attended the ceremony, which was held at the Central Johannesburg College, Alexandra Campus. Numerous awards were handed out, but not every student received one. “We believe that only excellence should be rewarded, otherwise awards are cheapened,” said Louise. The basic categories of awards were for attendance, improvement, performance, participation and effort. Award winners across all the grades were called up in these groups, and the ideals of each category explained by former students of the school. Everyone then received his or her personalised certificate. Louise was particularly pleased with the attendance record this year. “We started off with 285 children registered, of which 230 remained at the end of the year. Of these, an amazing 78 students had a 90+% attendance record, up from 54 in 2014.” There were three other categories of awards for optional activities outside the classroom: general knowledge tests, spelling proficiency and chess. Over and above these categories, each tutor was given the chance to select a particular student from their class for excellence in an area such as creativity, writing skill and consistency of performance. A new measurement tool was introduced in 2015. “We added a loyalty programme this year, whereby children accumulated points across a variety of parameters. Partly, this was to encourage them to be eligible to attend our annual camp, but it was also used to assess who our most outstanding students were across the whole school,” explained Louise. As always the children expressed their creative skills through dance, poetry and other means. “They love performing,” enthused Louise. “And, largely, they are pretty talented as well!” The tutors, too, had their moment on the stage. They sang the popular Christian song, “I believe in God the Father,” to rapturous applause from the audience. All in all, the Rose-Act year concluded on the highest possible note, with everyone going off on holiday looking forward to what 2016 will bring for this diligent and hopeful group of Alex learners.

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