ISASA will be offering four professional development workshops in 2012. Each workshop will be presented at least once in every ISASA region, for a total of over 20 workshops during the course of the year.

The four workshops are School Sustainability, Disciplinary Hearings for Learners, Performance Management and Best Practice in School Governance.

The workshops are presented by ISASA staff and professionals in the Human Resources and Legal fields. Workshops are open to any ISASA member school and available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Please download the ISASA Workshop Schedule 2012 for dates and descriptions of individual workshops. We encourage schools to book early as places are limited.

ISASA would like to congratulate all member schools on the results achieved by their matriculants in the 2011 examinations.

More than 50% of ISASA’s high schools offering matric wrote the IEB exams. We are pleased with the IEB results, not only because of the excellent pass rate and tertiary study entry achievements, but also because a number of our mid to low- fee schools have contributed to these results.

The demographic profile of independent schools writing the IEB exams has become more diverse, both socio-economically and in terms of race, and no longer reflects only learners from high-fee schools.

Just under half of ISASA’s schools wrote the state National Senior Certificate examination in 2011. The NSC pass rate of 70,2% shows that the adjustments made to the subject assessment guidelines by the Department of Basic Education have made the assessment requirements clearer, and this has in turn helped teachers and learners to know how much of and at what level the curriculum needs to be covered for success in the examinations.

ISASA Publications is pleased to announce the availability of Independent Education Summer 2011. Independent Education is the official ISASA magazine and is published quarterly by ISASA Publications.

Highlights of the Summer 2011 edition include: two ISASA schools sharing their student leadership models; Should children learn to read and write before five years of age? - two ISASA schools weigh in; a report-back on the Information Technology Showcase at St Benedict's; and Finding the Balance by Dave Bester. This edition also includes Snippets, Class Act, E-Bytes and The Ridge School Takes Control of Social Media, by Nick Praulins.

Independent Education Summer 2011 can be viewed online or downloaded in pdf format. Print copies of the magazine will be distributed during November.