The air was electric with excitement and happiness as the St Peter’s College matric Class of 2020 arrived with their parents to pick up their results on Friday, 19 February.
The class boasted a 100 per cent pass rate, with two learners achieving nine distinctions each.
One of those learners is Gathuku Matheri, who obtained distinctions in English, Afrikaans, maths, life orientation, physical science, information technology, business studies, history and advanced programme maths.
He said the shift to online learning and numerous assignments was the most challenging part of the final school year. “[Learning from home] is a completely different environment compared to physical school. You lack the student-to-teacher connection and feel very distant from everyone else. So there was an aspect of social isolation. “The period between March and June was possibly the most difficult times of the matric year,” he said.
Gathuku was also a prefect at the school and took part in squash, music, debating and public speaking as well as tutoring other school learners.
When asked about his future plans, Gathuku said he hopes to study mechatronics engineering at the University of Cape Town (UCT) to carry on his interest in the engineering field.
Ezra Vergotine was another top achiever in the school, obtaining six distinctions. He said the change of learning from home has not been a difficult one for him, and that it was not too difficult to work with the facilities available to him and the learners.
He explained, “Personally, the year wasn’t too bad because of all the websites and apps we could use. I would say academically, it was a little easier since work could be done in our own time as opposed to a normal schooling environment.”
Ezra said he is thinking of studying medicine at UCT now that he has completed high school.
