St. Dunstan's College

Working together to nourish and enrich the minds of our students, your children, we wish for you that this year and those that follow will be filled with many joyful events. Bill Gates once said, “The first five years have so much to do with how the next eighty turn out.” Ever mindful of the importance of this precious time in the lives of children, our pre-school aims to ensure that each of our students is individually cared for and prepared in the best possible way for their successful and happy futures. Proudly, we welcome you to book a guided tour of our school and experience with us the special journey we share with our students each day.

At the Pre-School the focus is on the holistic development of the children to prepare them for the start of formal education in Grade 1. The children’s emotional, social, physical and intellectual development is encouraged in a loving and nurturing environment. In 1989, to meet the need for a Pre-School, together with Mr Greg McLeod, headmistress Marianne Lichkus took on the task of building from scratch a pre-school institution. This opened in 1990 with an initial intake of 50 children and a teaching staff of three. Today, it has 130 pupils and a staff complement of seven teachers handling classes from grades 000 to grade 0.

Founded in 1918, the Preparatory School aims to provide a safe schooling environment which prepares pupils with an educationally challenging and stimulating atmosphere. Our aim: to promote creative thinkers under the banner of a strong Anglican tradition with emphasis on Christian values, leadership and self-confidence.

The Preparatory School has a fine educational reputation. Excellent results have been achieved in the Mathematics Conquesta and the SACEE Language challenge. The shared assessment has also produced outstanding results. These externally moderated exams serve as a benchmark for educational excellence.

The Preparatory School has a computer centre along with 18 classrooms which have been fitted with educational smart boards. This, along with our media centre and technology programme, allows the children to explore and expand their technical skills.

Our educational, sporting and cultural programmes, backed by the quality of teaching, care and a nurturing environment, give our pupils the unfair advantage. Music and drama are integral aspects of the curriculum, with individual music tuition being encouraged. Media and technology allow the children to explore and expand their technical skills.

St Dunstan’s actively takes part in all the major sporting activities, which include cricket, football, athletics, softball, swimming, tennis, badminton, netball, biathle, archery and hockey. The Junior Preparatory School encourages mini-tennis, mini-cricket and T-ball. Culturally, the children participate in art, pottery, drama, chess and wildlife. This allows the children to make informed choices as to what extra-curricular activity they would prefer to pursue when they move onto the College.

The College prides itself not only on a 100% pass rate since its inception in 1995, but the outstanding results attained at tertiary level. This is attributed to the school’s philosophy that academic excellence is about much more than merely obtaining excellent grades. It is about preparing students for an academic future that offers each student a plethora of choices wherever in the world their future takes them.

St Dunstan’s College is a school dedicated to the Christian values of service, humility, and love in everything we do and at every level of our institution. Our pupils strive for excellence in all aspects of their schooling including academic, cultural and sport. Sporting excellence is about adding balance in proportion to academia. It is about teaching life-lessons, building lifelong relationships and entering games well prepared with a positive and competitive spirit. The wide range of sports activities offered at St Dunstan’s College includes:

Athletics, Badminton, Basketball, Biathle, Cricket, Cross Country, Cycling, Equestrian, Football, Golf, Hockey, Netball, Rowing, Rugby, Squash, Swimming, Tennis and Waterpolo. The school offers a wide range of cultural and musical opportunities that allows our pupils to explore their unique talents.

The St Dunstan’s College Educational Support Centre was established in 2007 in order to respond to a critical need in South African schooling identified in Dr Steve Whitelaw’s University of Johannesburg doctoral thesis.

In this thesis, Steve brought attention to the fact that up to 50% of newly-qualified teachers had left the profession within five years of having graduated. Given the shortage of candidates currently applying to become teachers, this attrition rate is of national concern. One important reason established for the decision of so many young teachers to abandon the profession was a lack of effective school-based induction of new teachers. This failure left many new teachers feeling incompetent in fulfilling the many professional challenges that are only encountered upon the assumption of a full-time teaching position.

In order to respond to this need the centre offers a 12 week programme that is focused on offering advice on issues that new teachers commonly find problematic. Teachers attend the course once a week for approximately two hours after school hours. In addition to the benefits of the course content, teachers benefit from meeting their peers and realising that the difficulties they are experiencing are not unique to themselves, but in fact are generally faced by new teachers!