Heatherlands High School (George)

Heatherlands High School in George, where the Garden Route is beautiful and the teacher-to-learner ratio is absolutely not. 26 teachers for 912 kids? Bru, that is not a school, that is a taxi rank with a whiteboard. One teacher is basically looking after 35 learners at a time, which means if you had a question in class, you were taking a number and coming back Thursday. The teacher was not ignoring you, they were just statistically unavailable. And then the school description, eish. "A fee-paying institution with no boarding facilities." That is it. That is the whole vibe. No story, no soul, no mention of a rugby trophy or a chess club or even a decent tuck shop. Just "we charge you money and you sleep at home." George is a whole beautiful town with mountains and forests and the best pass in the Western Cape nearby, and this school's description sounds like it was written during load shedding on a phone with 3% battery. 84.1% matric pass rate is actually decent, we will give them that. More than one in six kids did not make it through, but the other five came out swinging considering they shared a teacher with an entire soccer team's worth of classmates. Overall verdict: Heatherlands is carrying George on a skeleton staff and somehow still getting most kids through matric, which is either impressive or a miracle, and at this point probably both.