HoëRskool Gerrit Maritz (Pretoria)

Hoërskool Gerrit Maritz in Pretoria, producing solid Afrikaner kids since whenever they decided to name a school after a Voortrekker. Very patriotic. Very committed to the brand. The man himself trekked across half of Southern Africa with an ox wagon and now his name is on a school where kids still can't find their classroom without GPS. Twenty point four learners per teacher. That means your educator is basically running a small township meeting every period. One teacher, twenty kids, one whiteboard, zero chance that Pieter at the back heard a single word about photosynthesis. And an 87.6% matric pass rate sounds impressive until you remember that means roughly one in eight kids did NOT pass, and those kids are now Gerrit Maritz's little secret. The school is not telling you that at the open day, bra. Thirteen hundred and twenty five learners in one school in Pretoria. That is not a school, that is a small municipality. There are departments in Tshwane with fewer staff problems. Getting from the tuck shop to the sport field probably takes a full period. And this is Pretoria, so you also had to survive the heat, the jacarandas blocking the road in October, and the very specific Pretoria energy where everyone is convinced their school is the best school, even when the evidence is sitting at 87.6%. Overall verdict: Gerrit Maritz is a solid, no-nonsense Pretoria school that gets the job done, much like the man himself, just with slightly more admin and slightly fewer ox wagons.