NB! Very Important exam and year-end info

Gershom Aitchison, host · [01:40]Yes, Gavin, you're 100% right. Everybody's getting stressed and anxious. We've got six weeks to go and exams are looming, and I've been getting a lot of correspondence from parents and kids about what the exam sessions will look like. We've got good news. We know exactly what it's going to look like. This week, cohort two, which is grade eight and grade nine, are on campus. That's the 19th to the 23rd of October. Next week, cohort three, which is grade 10 and 11, are on campus. That's the 26th to the 30th of October, and that ends the term three cohort rotations. From the 2nd of November, we start into our exam rotation schedule, and what that's going to look like for Edu Inc is grade four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine will be on campus from Monday the 2nd of November to Friday the 13th of November. In other words, the first two weeks in November. Grade four, five, and six will be on campus for the 16th to the 27th of November to write their exams. That's their exam session. The grade eights and grade nines will be at home from the 16th to the 27th of November to write their exams at home. The grade tens and elevens doing schooling from home for the first week of November, that's the second to the sixth, they will have study leave on the 9th and 10th of November, which is the Monday and the Tuesday, and they will be at home for that, and they will be on campus for their exams from the 11th to the 27th of November. So that means the grade tens and elevens start their exams on the 11th of November, and they finish on the 27th, and the grade fours to nines start their exams on Monday, the 16th of November, and they finish on the 27th of November. During the exam days, you're required to be on campus thirty minutes before the exam time. What that means is if your exams are scheduled to start at nine o'clock, you need to be on campus before eight thirty in the morning. When you have finished your exam, you need to go home and study at home. So parents, please have a look at the exam schedule that we've published on the website. It's under the resources, November 2020 final exams, and you can see and plan your days to drop off and collect your kids.

Gershom Aitchison, host · [03:47]The last week of school, which is the thirtieth of November to the third of December, Is our traditional last week at school, which means the 30th of November, the 1st and 2nd of December, that's the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, will be admin days for the teachers to finish marking and preparing the reports. Wednesday, the 2nd of December at 6:30 in the evening will be the compulsory honors evening at the Bryanston Country Club. It's going to look a little different this year. Please stay tuned for the details. It is compulsory because I would like everybody to be present in some form or another celebrating the extraordinary efforts and results that a lot of students have put in in this very, very difficult time, and I think it would be great to celebrate their achievements and successes on that evening, and I think we all need something to look forward to celebrating after a year that we've just had at the moment. Thursday, the 3rd of December, will be the report collection day from 7 o'clock until 11 o'clock as usual. We'll use the online booking system like we did for the middle of the year for parents who want to zoom in and chat or who want to be on campus to talk to the teachers. That's what our exam session for November looks like. I think it's very important that everybody prepares best they can. They have a lot of time to study and prepare. We know that going into the exam session in the first week of November is going to be revision and getting their heads right about what is coming.

Gershom Aitchison, host · [06:16]Looking in the crystal ball next year, I would love to be able to say that everybody's on campus, we're back to normal, and it looks and feels like what it was in January and February this year. But I think that might be wishful thinking, looking at what the trends around the world are right now. So I think the, the maxim of hoping for the best and planning for the worst might be appropriate right now. I'd like parents to start looking at a stable internet connection for home. The ideal internet connection, the most stable, is obviously fiber, and I would recommend five megs per person. So if there are three adults in the house using the internet, that you have a fifteen meg line at least. If there are five, that you have a twenty-five meg line. And that's primarily because the streaming, the video online, et cetera, requires a lot of bandwidth for it to be stable. The second thing is Edu Inc has lent and loaned a lot of its PCs out to students, and a lot of students picked up PCs that were lying around the house or laptops that were lying around the house, and some of them have been found wanting. So I think looking at a laptop for next year would be a great addition for the students. It's something they will use for a few years, and my recommendation is that you look for something like an i3 with eight gigs of RAM and a solid state or at least a half terabyte hard drive. I would recommend a fifteen-inch screen so that there's a numpad on the computer and that the screen is big enough for the kids to be able to see what's going on in that space. Edu Inc has a Microsoft school license, so if you have any challenges putting, Windows for education on it, we will be able to assist with that if we need to. And then lastly, which is not COVID related, but might, be complicated by COVID is ESKOM's inability to provide electricity stably to the country and every now and again dropping the ball when it comes to load shedding and things like that. And I would recommend a UPS for your internet connection so that if you have a laptop, you can run on battery for a few hours and still connect to a stable internet connection and that you're not losing any class time.

Unidentified speaker, host · [08:28]So in many respects, it's down to the mundane when 2021 starts. It's predictable. We know we're going to have some uncertainty. We know we're going to have electricity issues next winter. Also, anticipating having antibody tests later this week that everybody can take. We're expecting vaccines to be available soon. So it's a little different, this kind of preparation. It's less emergency and more strategic and planning. There's also changes on campus and with teachers. What can you tell us about that?

Gershom Aitchison, host · [08:55]Students will have seen that there's been a lot of trial weeks in the last couple of weeks, and we've still got a couple more weeks of trial weeks coming up, and that's very, very good for Edu Inc. I think it's a vote of confidence for the great job that we've done this year, that parents in these difficult times are still looking at coming on board with us. I'm very excited about some of the conversations I've been having with the new students. You're quite right. I mentioned earlier in the term that Mr. Arquette and Dr. Makings will be leaving us at the end of this year, and I'm very excited with the teachers that we have signed up for next year, but I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag just yet. Let's leave some of that anticipation for the new year. It's a little strange to be operations as usual in these uncertain times. I often count our blessings, the fact that Edu Inc is as solid as it is, and that we have such a supportive parent base and student base, and I'm very happy to be in the position we're right now, being able to deliver on the promises we made about getting through the curriculum and having students ready to write their exams at the end of this year. I think it's testament To the family that Edu Inc is, and how well everybody has worked together to make sure that we get to this point.