Teen named school quiz bursary winner

When Atlehang Dimpho Mokoena entered the SowetanSA Home Loans School Quiz competition last year, she had no idea that her lifelong dream of owning an Apple MacBook laptop would come true.

The 19-year-old, who is now doing her first year in biological sciences, was awarded a R50,000 AFCO bursary when her high school, St Francis College, walked away with the top prize that included another R50,000 that would go towards the school. She was in grade 12 at the time

“I've always told myself that I wanted a Macbook when I got to university, but I did not have a plan on how I would get it because I knew that my parents could only afford a basic laptop. But, I'm so happy because I managed to buy the Macbook with some of the money from the bursary,” she said.

“The money also helped to pay for my registration fees for this year. That helped a lot because NSFAS had not approved my funding yet and I was worried that I'd lose my place at Wits University,” she said.

With the remaining balance from the bursary, Mokoena believes that her registration fees for her next two years of study will be covered.

“Though a biological science degree was my second choice, medicine was my first choice and since I was not accepted for it, I plan to use this first year of my course as a bridging course and then I'll pursue medicine from next year,” she said.

Speaking about the quiz competition, Mokoena said it was not easy as she had to juggle being a head girl, a matriculant and extramural activities. But because of her love for general knowledge, she enjoyed being part of the competition.

“Our HOD of English, Mr Asere Ncube, was the one who found out about the Sowetan school quiz via an email that was circulating. He then gathered students who were interested and formed a team of four students who would participate in the competition,” Pieter Steyn, principal of St Francis College, told Sowetan.

Steyn says the prize money of R50,000 that the school won will be toward purchasing books for the media centre that the school is currently rebuilding.

“We had a media centre that fell into disrepair and since then we've been planning to rebuild it. We're currently busy with setting up the library and the prize money will solely be for purchasing books for the library,” he said.

In deciding on who to award the bursary to among the four students who participated in the quiz, Steyn said Mokoena was an obvious choice since she was one of their top matriculant achievers and was the most active participant in the quiz.

On preparing the students for the competition, Ncube said he had already been doing general knowledge tests with his learners.

“On Wednesdays during our free period that's when I made my learners aware of the world around them and to keep them abreast with what's happening in the world around them,” he explained.

“I've got several teams and when there's a competition like this, we look at the strengths of each team and we try to build one team. Say if one is strong in politics and the other in entertainment then we build a team from that. We also practised by writing tests on general knowledge,” he shared.

Ncube said the school is already gearing up for this year's Sowetan school quiz competition and look forward to defending their title.