ALBERTON-Alberton High school celebrates its 40th anniversary and has just appointed a new headmaster; Mr Jannie Olivier. This follows the retirement of Mr. Minnie, who served the school as headmaster for many years.
Mr Olivier served as deputy head for a period of six years at Vereeniging Gymnasium, the old Vereeniging high school. Before that he taught at Handhawer Primary school.
He plans to build on the legacy Mr Minnie left and as far as possible develop and extend the academic, sport and cultural offering of the school.
He feels the way forward is to work with the existing staff members, using their years of experience and their knowledge of the structure to forge the way forward. His open door policy reflects good interpersonal skills and a warm way with people.
His wife Lizelle and children; Carlo and Janelle, plan on relocating to Alberton a bit later this year, and Jenelle will attend Laerskool Randhart.
Mr Olivier is very proud of the academic performance of Alberton High in 2014, mentioning that the school excelled with 205 distinctions, of which Alysha Govender and Bhavik Dheda respectively achieved seven.
Alberton High School has a rich heritage on which to build. The school opened its doors in January 1974 to about 230 learners, employing nine teachers, with Mr Tobias as the acting principal.
For the first three weeks there were no desks and only nine chairs, which were kept in the staff room. The learner had to sit on the floor around the classroom walls. Learners of the school came mainly from Germiston High School.
At this stage there was no set uniform, and learners wore the uniform of their old school. It was from this very varied uniform collection that Mr Tobias decided on the school motto “Totumex Partibus”, which means “The whole is the sum of the parts”. Alberton High School was officially opened in 1975 with Rod Conacher as the first principal.
There was a staff of 28 and a learner enrollment of just on 400. At this stage, room E3 was used as a tuck shop and the rest of the E block was unused. There were no sports fields at all and sports practices used to take place on the piece of open ground two streets down from the school.
During the next few years the school saw remarkable growth and reached 1 100 learners in 1980. That was about the time Bracken High opened as the second English High School in Alberton, which took pressure off Alberton High School and enrollment returned to more reasonable numbers.
In 1980 Mr Conacher was succeeded by Mr Gerald Kallman. After 14 years Mr Kallman retired and Mr Minnie took the post in 1994.
Mr Minnie and Mrs Jardine were on the staff at Alberton High since the 70’s. This year the school celebrates its 40th anniversary!
Alberton High, under the guidance of Mr Jannie Olivier, will strive to uphold the standards of excellence, which began so many years ago, and this will be the basis for the next 40 years.
