DURBAN High School recently held their final assembly and annual Senior Speech Day awards ceremony for the Grade 12 learners.
The learners were address by guest speaker and old boy, Dr Donovan Govender, who was deputy head prefect in 2002 and chairman of the RCL in the same year. As a medical practitioner he drew from experience and inspired the Grade 12s by saying: “It is what you do with your education that counts!” before handing over the awards to the respective achievers.
The ceremony saw numerous awards handed out with the main awards being the highlight, including the CG Hands Memorial Prize for Dux which was awarded to Tharan Pillay, the GB Lapinsky Prize for Dux Proxime Accessit (Dux runner up) which was awarded to Nikyle Bisseru and the Kessel Feinstein prize for third in Grade 12 which was awarded to Taahir Patel. On the sporting side, Sportsman of the Year Award was awarded to Jeandre Petersen and the All Round Sports Achiever of the Year Award was awarded to Matthew Noot.
Tharan Pillay not only received Dux of 2015, but also received a merit certificate, the Richard Salmon Award for music, the Transvaal Old Boys’ Prize for English essay, the DC and EV Thompson prize for life sciences, which he shared with Taahir Patel, and the prize for life orientation.
DHS Head Master, Leon Erasmus congratulated the learners and recapitulated that next year would be the 150th year of the school and thanked the learners for being a part of the pre-celebrations.
Govender concluded by encouraging the learners to be positive about the future and to embrace their mistakes.
“Mistakes are inevitable; however with hard work and determination, anything is possible.”
In 2016, DHS will celebrate a milestone of 150 years with the overarching theme for 2016 being “Honour the tradition; explore the future.”
