1997 School Magazine

@iris @ra11111111r &S>cbool :J)Jrisb1111e 1997

MELLEAH CLARKE

A fter completing Year 12 at B.G.G.S . last year, Melleah Clarke is spending this year in Pietersburg, South Africa, as part of the Rota1y Youth Exchange Program. Ap- plicants to this program are selected on the basis of a rigorous selection proce- dure, including a series of interviews at both club and district levels, where the students must fulfil a range of criteria before progressing to the next stage. Out of the hundreds of applicants, only a limited number are chosen, and so just qualifying for a Rotaty Exchange is a significant achievement in itself. The city of Pietersburg, the capital of the Northern Province, is quite small, with a population of about 100,000 people, and a travelling time of ap- proximately ten minutes from one side of the city to the other. Pietersburg's claim to fame is that it is the site of the world's largest silicon processing plant. To fulfil her role as a Rota1y exchange student, Melleah is heavily involved with the Pietersburg 100 Rota1y Club, one of the three Rota1y clubs in the city.

really luckier than we think with out current school system. To add to her already busy sched- ule, Melleah is involved in many co- curricular activities both through her school and through Rota1y. She has travelled to the "nearby" town of Tzaneen (100 kilometres away) many times; learnt the basics ofhow towaterski when visiting the Ebeneezer Dam; trav- elled to the beach (1,000 kilometres away), to Uvongo (south of Durban), to Badplaas (near Barberton - as in The Power of One), to the Kruger National Park and to Zimbabwe; and will tour the Orange River in Namibia, and Cape Town, in November. Melleah is also proving herself to be a valuable addi- tion to Capricorn High School, by play- ing and teaching tuba in the marching band, and playing flute in the orchestra . We hope that Melleah enjoys the rest of her time in South Africa, as a Rotary Exchange student, and wish her eve1y success in the future.

Me/leah Clarke

ELIZABETH AHERN

Melleah is currently attending Capricorn High School , the only one of the six major seconda1y schools in the city to have English as the spoken language. The subjects she is taking are English, Afrikaans (second language), Histo1y, Geography, Mathematics and Biology. Melleah has had to come to terms with some significant differences between school life in Pietersburg and the familiar ehvironment of Grammar , the most immediate of which was the fact that Capricorn is a co-ed school. The other major differences she noticed are in the teaching methods employed at the school , which involve the students simply being given information to be repeated in the external exam, with no opportunity to apply the knowledge to more complex problems . However, the exams themselves are diffi- cult, with a pass mark of 33%, and a result in the vicinity of 45% being considered quite a good mark. On top of this , the security of the exams set by the Northern Province Education Depart- ment has come into question, with papers reportedly being stolen and sold before the exam was held last year. This means that the students have to wony about the integrity of their results as well as their performance in the final exam. To make matters worse, the Northern Province has more students in Matric (the equivalent to Year 12) than the rest of South Africa combined, so there is no shortage of competition. In Melleah's opinion, all these factors added together show that in Australia , we are

-------------------- 36 --------------------