Dear Parents and Guardians

A warm welcome to you all at the start of another academic year. I wish you a successful year ahead and I hope your son enjoys his time at the College. A special welcome is extended to those new to the College. To those who have sons starting in Grades 9 – 11, I hope your son fits in quickly and settles in well in his new school. To those who have sons starting high school as Grade 8s I welcome you to the College and hope that the next five years are happy ones for your son and that he enjoys his time at Bishops.

Being a parent at a high school is different from being a parent as a prep school as your son becomes more independent and learns to deal with many issues, previously addressed by parents, himself. This is an important part in his development and we need to encourage him to take responsibility more and more. That does not mean in any way that a parent simply removes him/herself from school life – it simply changes. Keep boundaries and expectations in place for your developing teenage boy but be flexible in how you treat him. Love him unconditionally but make sure that your family values and what you regard as important remains in place. There will be challenging moments along the way but we are there for you, to work in partnership as you son grows. Please remember that we are a partnership – we also want what is best for your son and for him to succeed. We may not always agree on issues but please trust the educational judgement and expertise of the staff.

I shared a memory with our boys on the first day of term this year from my family trip to South Korea where we visited our son for the first time in almost two years. On one cold day, while walking through a snow-covered park in Korea, I took a photograph that speaks to me. It was of my son and his girlfriend who stood facing each other and in the background, above their heads, was a banner with a  saying attributed to Buddha containing the words “No matter how hard the past, you can always begin again.”

I found these words comforting and shared them with our boys. They may have experienced hardship in the past, they may be one of the new boys entering a space for the first time and be apprehensive. Either way, I wanted them to know that new beginnings were always possible for them and encouraged them to use this chance to re-set, re-imagine and begin again.

Our teaching staff across all three campuses had a wonderful start to the year as they listened to the experiences and advice from Deputy Vice Chancellor of Stellenbosch University, Prof Nico Koopman, who addressed us on Transformation and lessons learned at the university. This was followed by an entertaining and very thought-provoking session with Dr Michael Mol on wellness and health. All-in-all a good start to the year!

Staff News

We congratulate two members of staff who welcomed a new child to their families.
Mr Nhlanhla Mbuyazi’s wife gave birth to a baby girl and Mr Michael Vamvadelis’ wife had their second child, a baby boy. We wish both families well as they welcome their new children into their families.

We welcomed a number of teaching staff new to the College:
Ms Lydia Barnett (Afrikaans)
Ms Jacqueline Dupont (Resource Centre Manager)
Mr Japhta Makwena (Afrikaans)
Ms Kirsten Raasch (Economics)
Ms Julianne van Zuydam (Mathematics)
Ms Michelle van Zyl (Mathematics) 
In addition, we welcome Dr Caitlin Whittaker in to our A Level Life Sciences position.

We have a number of new interns:

Mr Khets Ngcobo (Geography), Mr Geelbooi Molefe (Maths), Ms Jamielee Clogg (Maths), Ms Cathryn Baird (BSU), Ms Caitlin Eagle (BSU), Mr Lwazi Madi (SPW).
On our support staff, we welcome our new school doctor, Dr Colin de la Harpe and our biokineticist, Mr Niel Michau.

We have two temporary staff standing in for the first term and thank Mr Rodney Inglis (History) and Ms Wendy van Heerden (Music Dept admin) for helping us out.

We hope all staff new to Bishops enjoy their time with us and grow professionally as they contribute positively to our boys’ experience.

Academic

Our matric results were released today and we are very proud of how the Class of ’22 performed. Please see all results here.

My thanks go to the staff, parents and many others who helped our boys throughout their academic careers thus far and my congratulations go to the boys who have done so well!

Our school academic year has begun already and I hope your son has set himself a good academic tone.

Our A Level programme has begun and we are excited to see how the 18 boys who have taken up this opportunity enjoy the challenge. My thanks to Mrs van Schalkwyk, whose academic leadership has made this programme a reality and my thanks go to the staff involved who have agreed to teach at this level.

Sport

There were a number of sporting activities that took place before term started and I thank all staff who made this possible. Our rowers were doing pre-season training and our cricketers had a very successful Peninsular Festival, the results of which appear below.

Estates

Our front entrance to College is difficult to navigate at the moment and we thank parents for their patience. Once completed, we will have a proper space for our security guards, a decent parking area for parents, a proper access road, lighting down the avenue and we will be able to secure our campus, if necessary. This project should be completed by the end of February, so we ask for your continued understanding.

Construction of our new Learning Commons will begin in April and will last a year as we develop a new space, linked to the library and the classrooms, that will enhance the learning opportunities for our boys, creating a space for collaborative and modern learning. Again, there will be disruption but the end result will be worth it.

Final Thoughts

I had a wonderful break with my family and am looking forward to the year ahead as we start free of pandemics and restrictions to our activities. I have enjoyed interacting with boys, staff and parents as the year has begun and hope to have a chance to meet you all as time passes.

I share with you below my assembly message to the boys from this morning’s assembly at which I spoke about our new Values Statement and tried to explain to the boys the meaning of our values and what it means to live out these values. I shall be continuing this theme for a few weeks.

I wish you all the very best for the year ahead. Please keep us informed of any challenges and issues your son may be facing but also let us know of his triumphs and successes. I love being able to compliment a boy on something he has done.

Enjoy the term ahead!

Kind regards

Antony Reeler
Principal

School Values: Courage

Our Prep School has had a set of five values that they have aspired to live by, known by the acronym of the MITRE – Manners, Integrity, Togetherness, Respect and Empathy. Last year, acknowledging that more than half of our boys didn’t attend our Prep and were thus not part of learning those values, we went through a consultative exercise with you to come up with values that apply to the College in particular but ones that could be used by the school as a whole. We came up with five values that were most regarded by the boys and staff as ones we can aspire to live by. These are: Courage, Humility, Integrity, Kindness and Respect and are captured in our new Values Statement.

A policy or a statement is not worth the paper upon which it is written if those values are not spoken about, explained and lived in the school community. I will be taking some time in assemblies to cover each value and try to explain what it means to live that value in our everyday lives.

Today I start with Courage…

Courage is defined many ways – usually as bravery, willingness to face adversity but also pain and danger. Courage is not only physical by nature but has moral and mental aspects as well.

In physical activities such as sport, courage means tackling someone bigger than you but can also mean having the strength to bowl the last ball of a cricket match when you opponents need one run to win. It can mean taking the deciding penalty in a soccer or hockey game. Standing up physically to a challenge that is facing you.

Courage is also needed in the arts as we perform in front of an audience or put our heart and soul on display for people to admire or criticize. Courage is speaking in public to a group of people.

But courage runs deeper than that. Moral courage is facing up to injustice and speaking out. Calling out a friend for making unkind comments. Standing up for something that is wrong. And that courage is often much harder. Courage means standing alone at times because being in a crowd doesn’t necessarily require courage but standing alone does.

Courage means making that phone call or sending a text to ask someone out.

Courage is required when facing illness and many of you have done just that or have witnessed family members and friends who have had to face significant medical or health challenges.

So courage comes in many forms – physical, emotional, social, mental and moral.

Courage is also spiritual. Spiritual courage means opening ourselves up to our own vulnerability and the mysteries of life. Spiritual courage allows us to encounter people of different religious faiths and spiritual traditions without judgment. In Christianity, courage is required to have faith in God’s will for us and to live out our faith.

We ask you, as members of the Bishops community, to have courage – in all its forms. To live courageously so we can face others and ourselves in the knowledge that we tried our best in all we did – we were true to ourselves.

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

Nelson Mandela

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

Theodore Roosevelt

And then one of my favourite quotes…

"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow."

Mary Anne Radmacher

Academic Awards Term 4 2022

Grade 11 Academic Awards based on November 2022 Exam Results

Ties
Sam Berrisford
Jack Crafford
Stefan Dixon
Koame Kota
Jack Noussis
Dane Rogers

Jerseys
Ryan Ferreira
Hasheel Govan
Divakaran Govender
Jody Syndercombe
Ilyaas van Graan
Adam Buckham
Michael Comitis

Grade 10 Academic Awards based on November 2022 Exam Results

Ties
Benjamin Karlein
Avi Naidoo
Alexander Newton

Jerseys
Jonty Bresler
Brett Jenman
Luke Moorgas

Grade 9 Academic Awards based on November 2022 Exam Results

Ties
Gabriel Comitis
Luke Davidge
Max Fair
Joseph Lee
Veer Patel
Zavier Petersen
Samuel Stavely-Alexander
Sebastian Von Bormann

Jerseys
Daniel Kushner
Noah Macnab

Academic House Awards for 2022
Most improved House/Grade: School House - Grade 11
Best House/Grade: White House - Grade 9

Trophy for the Best House in Academics in 2022: Gray House

New Boy Heritage Test

The 2023 winner of the Frank Reid Shield for the New Boy Heritage Test is Kidd House.

New Boy Orientation

On Tuesday 17 January, we welcomed our newest generation of Bishops gentlemen. We wish them well during their next five years with us at the college.

Experience Bishops

Our annual open day will be held on Friday the 27th January 2023 between 7am and 1pm. We are expecting close to 600 additional guests on campus, which will include potential new boys and their parents. It will be a busy morning at the main gate, and suggest that existing parents drop their boys off at either the Sandown Road, Riverton Road or White House gates that morning. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Cheerleaders

Congratulations to Ryan Caffery who will be our Head Cheerleader for 2023!
Our boys wasted no time in setting up their first practice of the year. We look forward to hearing you cheer on our sportsmen.

Social Media

Our social media pages depict daily life at Bishops, results, upcoming events, and showcase all that we have on offer at Bishops and the difference our boys make within our community. We encourage you to follow our pages and interact with them.
Facebook: Bishops Diocesan College
Instagram: bishopscollegeza
Twitter: DiocesanCollege

My Bishops Life Parent Portal

We remind parents to utilize our online portals, Please click here for help.

SOCS Sports Parent Portal

We make use of a software programme for sports information, this app will give you sports fixtures, results and other pertinent details easily from your smartphones.

Follow these simple steps to be able to access all sporting details via this method, anywhere, anytime.

Laptops or PCs and mobile phones:

• Go to a browser on your smartphone and browse to the address www.bishopssport.org
• Click on the sport tab.
• Add to home screen and call it Bishops Sport.
• Now at a click of a button from your cell phone you can see What’s on, access Maps, details of fixtures and more. 
• When checking click on the ‘What’s On’ page, choose the date and sporting code and then click on the relevant team.

The Sports coaches will be increasing the use of this platform to communicate important information to you, regarding details around the various fixtures. We are hoping this will limit the need for too much email communication and hence we encourage you to use this platform as your first port of call. 

We would welcome any feedback from you and will happily answer any further questions you may have.

Kilimanjaro 2023 Adventure

Bishops boys, parents and siblings are invited to join a trip to Tanzania and climb Kilimanjaro in the June/July school holidays in 2023.  This will be the 6th trip Bishops has undertaken to climb Africa’s highest mountain and the world’s highest free-standing mountain.

Dates: Thursday  22nd June to Saturday 1st July 2023.

We will do the 6-day Machame route on Kilimanjaro.

A meeting in the Memorial Theatre is arranged for 6:00pm on Thursday 26 January 2023, to discuss details of the trip and to sign up. Everyone is welcome to join.

Please click here to view the poster.

My School Card and School Days

Please assist us as a community and raise funds for those in need where possible. Register for School Days and My School card at Woolworths, and donate by simply using your cards, while earning rewards in the process.
Please log on and register, the School Days. Once you have done this, it is automatically linked to purchases made at Dischem and other partners.

Registration is simple :
Go to www.schooldays.co.za
Download the School-Days Mobile app and join.
Join with the attached unique registration QR code. This will automatically link the supporters profile to Bishops account.
My School Card https://www.myschool.co.za/

My School card is available via registration at Woolworths – if you have a card, please remember to swipe every time you shop at Woolworths.

Blue Pages

Each term, an interactive digital newsletter is circulated to our entire Bishops community. The newsletter is aimed at assisting our community advertise their business, product or brand.

Please email bluepages@bishops.org.za to book your ads, the digital magazine generally goes out at the end of each term.

Ladles of Love

In the wake of Covid, a small group of Bishops families started supporting a Sandwich Drive managed by Ladles of Love, an organization that does remarkable work in feeding South Africa’s hungry. We have two moms on board who are involved with NGO’s in the areas where the feeding takes place and both have attested to the fact that this feeding is still very much needed, and it is allowing parents to worry less about their children being hungry and actually become more productive themselves.

From the Ladles of Love website: “Sourcing and distributing food donations is one thing. Ensuring that food is prepared and ready to eat is a whole other ball game. Through the Sandwich Drive we can get ready-to-eat food much faster and more effectively to those who are hungry, while giving South Africans ways to do volunteer work from home.” (https://ladlesoflove.org.za/donate-sandwich-drive/)

It is important that we teach our boys to contribute to the communities around them and this is a very easy and cost effective way for them to make a meaningful contribution.  We will be starting our sandwich collection this coming Monday, 30 January. Please do get a loaf of bread each and suitable spreads available to your boys and get them spreading slices on Sunday night. The bread bag filled with sandwiches need to be placed on the benches in front of the Memorial Chapel on Monday mornings. (Guidelines on making/packing the sandwiches: https://ladlesoflove.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/LadlesOfLove_FSGuidelines.pdf). One of the Bishops drivers will then take the sandwiches to a Ladles collection point.

It would be fabulous to increase the number of families contributing sandwiches weekly. Please email Anne Stevens (astevens@bishops.org.za) to have your name added to the reminder list for these. At one loaf per boy, Bishops has the potential to make over 6000 sandwiches weekly. We would love to start getting close to even half of this!

SPW
Bishops created a programme that launched in 2020, SPW. The Sports Performance and Wellness programme, aims to achieve a holistic development of the boys by addressing their conditioning, performance, wellness, rehab, and injury management. The programme focuses on developing gross motor skills and hand-eye coordination at the Pre-Prep, which progresses to a more specialised conditioning programme that targets high-performance sports development and promotes general wellness at the College.

Click on the link for a more in depth look at how the team manages the programme and what it entails on a day to day basis. https://youtu.be/bXIqG3EjfMw

Sport at Bishops Coming Up

Bish Bosch is back! Our annual day/night T20 against Rondebosch Boys High takes place at 6pm on Wednesday 25 January, at the Frank Reid Oval. We encourage supporters and hope to see you there cheering on our 1st XI.

Cricket News

The 1st XI and u15A cricket sides collectively played 13 matches during the first fortnight in January. The 1st XI hosted Rondebosch CC and Wynberg in warm-up games before competing in the annual Peninsula Cricket Festival in Cape Town. The 1st XI won their matches against Rondebosch CC (50 overs) and Wynberg (50 overs) before registering festival wins v St David's; Pretoria Boys' (50 overs) and Affies (50 overs) and losses against Waterkloof and St Charles (T20).

The u15A team got their year off to a successful start with a victory over Wynberg on 9 January 2023 (50 overs) before embarking on a 4/5 win ratio at the Peninsula Cricket Festival. Victories against St David's (dec); Waterkloof (dec); Pretoria Boys' (50 overs) and St Charles (T20) were offset by an unsuccessful run-chase v Affies (50 overs).
Personal milestones - with either bat or ball - were recorded by Bishops' cricketers as follows:

1st XI:
Cole Crawford: 56 v Rondebosch CC
Cole Crawford: 88 v Wynberg
Cole Crawford: 74 v Pretoria Boys
Adnaan Lagadien: 61 v Pretoria Boys
Adnaan Lagadien: 76* v Affies.
Kashief Joseph: 67 v Pretoria Boys
Kashief Joseph 80 v Affies.
Storm Matthews: 6/25 v Rondebosch CC
Peyton Leigh: 5/21 v Pretoria Boys

15A:
Luc Dicey: 72* v Wynberg
Waco Bassick: 69* v Wynberg.
Litha Mbiko: 60 v St David's 
Thaafier Japtha: 50 v Affies
Thaafier Japtha: 81 v St Charles
Alex Vintcent: 5/25 v St David's
Alex Vintcent: 6/9 v Waterkloof

Rowing

2022 SA Schools Boatrace

Year after year the Bishops Rowing Club is left to depend on the strength of the Grade 11 age group to pull their weight in numbers to fill the boat for the first team, due to the Grade 10 being away at Epic.

This year saw four of our Grade 9 students step up to race, with most of the opposition crews being older, stronger and more experienced. However, our young gentlemen performed brilliantly in the heats to earn themselves a spot in the D-Final against Rondebosch! A brave race in the final, and well done to Bosch who took the victory but many were impressed at the resilience and technique of the Bishops Crew.

Well done to:
Joseph Power
Didi Marx
Jett Bacher
Bradley Calow
Cameron Redfern
Jack Breslin
Matthew Maurel
John van der Watt

Bishops Carnival

Bishops Carnival is around the corner.  Should you want to sell any of your goods/products at the event, please click on THIS LINK to access the request form to have your own market stall.

New Commitee Members

We are looking for nominations for the new ODU Committee, should you know anyone who may be interested or if you would like to nominate yourself, please click on THIS LINK.
https://forms.gle/zKwSVsELhM567cvm7