14/01/2026
Northern Areas People Development Initiative Newsletter July – November 2025
Second Chance Matric Programme
Registration for the 2025/26 intake took place on 26 July 2025. Some of the Trustees of our funding partner, The Raymond Uren Education Trust played a very hands on role during this year’s registration where we employed a more comprehensive approach to the orientation of the prospective students.
Although both attendance as well as the dropout rate remains worrying, we are working hard to motivate students to persevere and make full use of this opportunity to improve their chances of employment and further study going forward. The counselling support provided by Ms. Bianca Frieslaar is beginning to bear fruit.
The results of the May/June 2025 Amended & NSC Examination served as a reminder that we are blessed to have teachers that sacrifice so much to ensure that the adults in our SCM PROGRAMME have a fighting chance to get a matric qualification. On 18 October News 24 reported comprehensively on the May/June Results for both the NSC as well as the Amended SC Candidates that sat for the Examinations, under the heading “ONLY 18.3 % OF ADULTS PASS 2025 SENIOR CERTIFICATE exams”. The article quotes the Minister of Basic Education, Ms. Siviwe Gwarube as … “being seriously concerned about the poor performance of the candidates who register for the Amended Senior Certificate. These are adult learners who have not had the appropriate support to write the exam, and this explains the large number of no-shows and their poor performance across all subjects”.
This year our SCM team spent time analyzing some aspects of the performance of our candidates in the said Examination against the information in the article we referred to. We were pleasantly surprised that we could report to our funders that we, in some cases performed well above the national average in amongst others:
• Registration & students turning up for the Examination across subjects.
• Pass % in the following subjects
(Refer to slide 3 for stats)
______________________________________________
Santam Child Art Project 2025
The Santam Child Art Project 2025, a project funded yearly by Santam was managed by NAPDI between January and June.
Seven Primary Schools (4 from Western Cape and 3 from Eastern Cape) participated in the project this year. The theme was “My Best Moment Ever!” and the Artists worked with a group of grade 6 and 7 learners at each school over 12 art lessons to produce +-630 art works that were submitted into the Santam Child Art competition in June 2025. The top 13 art works from throughout the country are chosen for the Santam 2026 calendar.
The following schools participated in the project and we had a total of 23 winners.
Helenvale Primary, Machiu Primary, K**a Primary (Eastern Cape), Bridgeville Primary, Sunnyside Primary, Athlone North Primary and Norma Road Primary (Western Cape).
We are exceptionally proud that Mekyle Baaitjies from Helenvale Primary painting titled “I’m Out of this World “was selected for the 2026 Calender. The Helenvale team, under the stewardship of their excellent teacher, Mr Caylin Pienaar earned total prizemoney of R 9 500.00 for their school. The school in return rewarded the winners handsomely and retained only R 2,000.00 for the development of the arts at the school. Machiu primary school guided by the quietly spoken but exceptionally talented Artist Miranda Grootboom also produced a number of winners from grade 4 up to 7.
Congratulations to all the schools, Artists and the winners that participated this year, we look forward to the 2026 project.
Segi Moodley (Project Manager)
