2026 Prize- Giving Address:
Academic Prize-Giving – Grades 8–11
Honoured guests, staff, young ladies, parents, and friends – good morning!
In the soul of South Africa, our schools are sacred spaces.
They are the places where futures are quietly shaped; where young people learn not only algebra and Shakespeare, chemistry and history, but also how to live alongside others — how to collaborate, to disagree respectfully, to belong, and to find purpose beyond themselves.
Today, we gather to celebrate academic achievement — and we do so proudly. Prize-giving days are moments of affirmation: for effort sustained, for talent refined, for ambition pursued with discipline.
They matter deeply. And they matter especially at a school like this one.
This prize-giving also comes at a meaningful moment for me, personally.
I stand before you having completed one day shy of eight months as the Principal of the Pietermaritzburg Girls’ High School, and I am now three weeks into my first full academic year here. It has been an immense privilege.
I have seen a school that works hard, that thinks seriously, that is busy, vibrant, occasionally messy — and deeply alive. I have seen classrooms marked by attentiveness and intellectual curiosity. I have seen teachers who care fiercely about their subjects and their girls. I have seen young women who are ambitious, articulate, questioning and capable.
There is much to celebrate here. And today’s award recipients are powerful evidence of that.
Now, if you will indulge me, kind audience, I would like to deviate slightly from the traditional prize-giving address.
Instead of speaking only about results — important though they are — I want to speak about the kind of schools we are, and why they matter, not only to the girls seated here today, but to South Africa itself.
Because schools like this one — our former Model C schools — remain among the most successful, resilient and quietly powerful institutions in our country.
They always have been.
Year after year, decade after decade, they have produced leaders in every sphere of national life: in business, law, medicine, science, education, sport, the arts, civil society and public service.
Not because they are perfect, but because they are demanding. Not because they are exclusive, but because they are grounded in tradition, expectation and effort.
These schools occupy a rare and important space.
They are academically rigorous and culturally rich, yet remain — crucially — accessible.
Their fees are not trivial, but they are attainable for the ambitious, striving middle-class of this country: families who value education deeply, who believe in effort, and who want their daughters stretched rather than sheltered.
They are schools for families who have opted IN to South Africa — and who are prepared to face the complexity, diversity and sometimes discomfort of real life in this country. And that matters.
Because education that is connected to society prepares young people to lead within it.
Our schools – schools like GHS – are among the last truly integrated, democratic spaces in South Africa.
They are places where girls from different backgrounds sit side by side in classrooms. Where different languages, cultures, faiths and family stories intersect daily — not in theory, but in practice.
Where a shared worksheet, a debating podium, a hockey team or a dormitory in Morningside becomes a great social leveller. This is not a weakness of the system. It is its greatest strength.
It teaches empathy. Perspective. Resilience.
It prepares young people for a big, sometimes messy, and very un-curated world — the very real one they will inherit.
In a world increasingly seduced by shininess and glossiness, by manicured lawns, and by the language of exclusivity, it is worth saying this plainly:
Excellence is not the same as elitism.
True excellence is built in classrooms — through sustained effort, strong teaching, high expectations and intellectual honesty.
It is built where young people are challenged, not merely comforted. Where they are required to think, to engage, to work — and sometimes to fail, to reflect and to try again.
Schools like this one do not promise ease. They promise formation.
And that is why today matters so much.
The girls we honour today are not merely high achievers. They are young women who have embraced the discipline of learning; who have shown consistency, curiosity and determination; who have understood that achievement is rarely accidental — and never effortless.
They represent what is best about this school.
So today, as we celebrate academic achievement, let us also be clear about what we are choosing to stand for.
We are choosing to stand for shared purpose over social separation.
We are choosing schools that do not promise to make life comfortable — but promise instead to make young people capable.
Capable of thinking clearly and working hard, and capable of living alongside difference. Capable of leading in a country as complex, demanding and unfinished as our own.
Schools like GHS do not endure by accident.
They endure because generations before us had the courage to believe in them — to serve them, to defend them, and – like you have, ladies and gentlemen, like our guest of honour has, and like my own wife has, with her four sons – to send their children through their doors, even when it could have been easier to walk away.
That responsibility now rests with us.
We must resist the temptation to retreat into enclaves of comfort. And we must reject the notion that separation is a solution. Because education is not a private escape from society. It is a preparation FOR IT.
So let us be bold in our loyalty, and confident in our standards. And unapologetic in our belief that schools like the Pietermaritzburg Girls’ High School are not relics of the past — but essential instruments of the future.
To the girls we honour today: you carry this legacy forward.
To the parents and staff who sustain it: thank you for your faith.
And to this great school — and to all schools like it across South Africa —
May we continue to invest in them, may we continue to believe in them, and may we never lose the courage to stand by them.
Thank you.