Aspiring doctor, Grace Travers, is going places.
The Grade 7 learner at Portland Primary beat tens of thousands of competitors to take home a gold medal at the Western Cape Horizon Maths Competition.
“It was surprisingly hard,” said Grace Travers, a soft-spoken girl from Beacon Valley. “I didn’t think I would place that well.”
Grace came 97th, which doesn’t sound impressive until you hear how many other learners took part.
“About 33 000,” said Grace’s class teacher Melissa Theron.
“It was 33 122 children,” Grace interjected quietly.
Grace was also the only learner from Mitchell’s Plain to earn a spot among the top 100 learners, though very few schools from Mitchell’s Plain took part, Theron said.
She added that Portland Primary was always on the look out for competitions.
“We want to participate in the competitions because we want our children to be exposed to things that are happening outside so that they can see that there is also another world and a life out there and to give our learners recognition for their achievements and what we know they are capable of doing.”
The competition, which is a provincial education department Initiative, is run over several months and in three phases.
Theron said that the first round consisted of old exam papers that the learners completed in class. The learners who achieved above a specific percentage in those tests then progressed to the next round. The final test was written at Star College in Athlone.
Portland had at least a dozen learners who took part in the final round, but Grace was the one who came out tops for the school.
This earned her a gold medal.
Grace may have been surprised by her achievement but her teachers are not.
Theron boasted that Grace is a 90% aggregate learner in all her subjects and has been since grade R.
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