Eight years of awards. Fifty learners at a time.
Since 2017 the Metro East Education District has handed False Bay High a certificate nearly every year — for pass rates, for Bachelor passes, for subject after subject. Here is the whole wall of them.
Most schools keep their trophies in a cabinet by the front door, where visitors can see them. Ours sit on a shelf in the office, and for a long time nobody thought to photograph them. This page is the first time they have all been in one place.
There is a particular kind of award that is harder to win than it looks. Not the one for a single brilliant year — any school can have a brilliant year — but the one that measures you across three of them. Two of the four trophies above are exactly that: the Metro East Education District recognising False Bay High for consistent Bachelor pass rates of 50% or more over three consecutive years, and for holding an overall pass rate between 90% and 100% across the same stretch. You cannot win those with one good class. You win them by doing the same thing well, year after year, while the learners change.
A note on the name
If you look closely at the older certificates you will see Valsbaai Hoërskool and Valsbaai High rather than False Bay High School. Same school. We are dual-medium, and for years the district recorded us under our Afrikaans name — it changed to False Bay High on the 2024 certificates and has been going back and forth ever since. We have left every certificate exactly as it was issued.
The record, year by year
Everything below is a certificate the school was actually handed. Nothing here is rounded up, averaged or inferred.
Matric Awards
2017
Two awards in one evening — and both of them measured over three years, not one.
Matric Awards
2018
The following February, the district handed over the same two certificates again.
National recognition
2019
Eleven candidates wrote. Between them they brought back sixteen distinctions — enough to put a school of fifty on a national list.
This one came from the Skoleondersteuningsentrum, which ranks small schools across the country by distinctions per candidate rather than by raw totals — the only fair way to compare a matric class of eleven with one of three hundred.
“Uitstekende onderrig open die deur na sukses” — excellent teaching opens the door to success. We have it on the wall.
NSC Awards
2021
Back in the hall after the pandemic years, with the pass rate where it had always been.
NSC Awards
2022
The year the Physical Sciences department was named on a certificate of its own.
NSC Awards
2023
Another year, another 90–100%.
NSC Awards — the big year
2024
A 100% pass rate, a 100% subject pass in Physical Sciences, and eighteen subjects brought in at between 90% and 100%. Five certificates in one night.
NSC Awards — the most recent
2025
Handed over in February 2026: fifteen subjects at between 90% and 100%, across three certificates. Every subject on the timetable is on one of them.
What a certificate cannot show you
Read the 2024 and 2025 certificates again and notice what is missing: there is no subject carrying the school. Languages, sciences, mathematics, accounting, history, art, tourism — they are all there, all at 90% and above. That is not a department having a good run. That is what happens when a class is small enough that a teacher knows, by the second week, exactly which learner has not understood the lesson.
We cap each year group at a handful of learners and the school at fifty. A teacher here does not stand in front of thirty-five faces hoping the quiet ones are following. They can see that they are not, and they stop and fix it that morning. Eight years of certificates is simply what that looks like when you add it up.
And none of it belongs to the school as an institution. It belongs to learners who did the work, and to teachers who refused to let anyone drift — which the district noticed too. The 2022 Physical Sciences award is not addressed to False Bay High School at all. It is addressed to the physics teachers and the science department.
Thinking about Grade 8 — or a fresh start in Grade 10?
Places are limited by design. If you would like to see the school, meet the teachers and look at these certificates in person, the office will arrange a visit.
Come and see the shelf for yourself
Small classes, a full CAPS curriculum and Umalusi accreditation, in Strand. Visits are arranged through the office.