Jeppe Girls appoints new headmistress
Bhagwan has been the acting headmistress since her predecessor, Dina Gonçalves, died last June.
Sybil Bhagwan was appointed as the new headmistress of Jeppe High School for Girls.
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Bhagwan has been the acting headmistress since her predecessor, Dina Gonçalves, died last June.
Bhagwan has been part of the Jeppe Girls’ family since January 2002, when she joined the school as a history and senior Afrikaans teacher.
Hailing from Kwazulu-Natal, Bhagwan comes from a family of accomplished teachers.
Both her parents were teachers, and her father, James Reuben, is a retired headmaster.
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Having qualified from Springfield Teacher Training College in 1985, she went on to a BA degree with majors in history and criminology and then a BA Honours in history.
In her first teaching post at Meadowlands Secondary in Natal, she initiated several programmes to enhance academic excellence and was instrumental in establishing languages, maths and science extra lesson support programmes.
She also established peer and career counselling programmes.
These stood her in good stead for her new role at Jeppe Girls.
Her dedication in the classroom made her a firm favourite with many girls, and she is still in contact with a number of former pupils who took up her challenge to be the best they can be.
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She became the head of the Afrikaans Department in 2006.
She was appointed deputy headmistress of the school in 2012 in charge of academics, discipline and pastoral care.
Although approached many times by independent schools, her passion remains in public education.
She lives by the 14th Dalai Lama’s creed: “Be kind wherever possible. It is always possible.”
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