Calvary Christian College started in the old Jack Eustice Hall in Booysens in 1986, then moved to the Meredale Pleasure Resort before finally, in 1994, coming to rest in Alan Manor at a place originally called Mooi Havens.
The early years were turbulent indeed. The previous government did not like the idea of schools being open to all races.
But that is what they believed and stood by as a Biblical principle. In fact, the government threatened to close the school on numerous occasions.
In 2003, the school bought a 16-hectare piece of land behind the existing school property.
“It has taken us since 2007 to get our approval from the Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (GDARD) and the municipality, ” said principal Fenella Potgieter.
“At last in 2021, the school is seeing movement and has begun to build the wall in front of the site of the new high school.
“While the school has been waiting for these approvals, we started our high school in 2006 and the first matrics wrote the Independent Examination Board (IEB) examinations in 2010. In the past 11 years, Calvary Christian College has had only two failures, that’s over a 99% success rate,” she said.
Today, the school has over 400 learners and is set to grow to more than 600 learners once the new high school buildings are completed. The high school property will initially have three double-storey buildings to accommodate its administration centre, classrooms, laboratories and computer centre.
The sports facilities will be shared with the primary school and will initially offer soccer, netball, athletics and cross-country and, according to Potgieter, they are also looking at establishing a mountain bike trail on the property.
The school follows a Blended Learning Model which combines online learning and contact teaching.
“We allow the foundation phase (Grade R to Three) learners to learn in a full-contact environment before exposing them to tablets in Grade Four and upwards. This allows them time to learn and develop their interactive online skills before they get to the higher grades. They then progress to using laptops in Grades Eight to 12,” said Potgieter.
“Our Grade Eight to Nine learners are exposed to online teaching in a supervised environment, while the majority of their subjects are presented in a class contact environment. When they get to Grades 10 to 12, they can choose from a range of subjects, presented in both a supervised online environment and a classroom contact situation.
“Our association with an online school, which has been operating since 2008, provides Calvary Christian College with the benefit of great stability in the online education space.
“The school’s purpose statement is to develop future leaders of integrity, and this it has done, to the glory of God.”
