Rustenburg Girls' High School

Rustenburg Girls’ High School, a government school in Rondebosch, Cape Town, South Africa, embraces the vital role that physical and mental fitness play in a well-rounded education and has taken proactive steps to ensure its students' holistic growth and success. The school has introduced a Sports Policy to ensure that learners are provided with opportunities to participate in various sports engagements, thanks to which the school aims to promote healthy living and enhance the overall wellbeing of its students and wider community.

Rustenburg Girls’ High School is an unapologetically academically-driven school, but wanted to balance this focus by leveraging South Africa’s appetite for sports and being outdoors. The school recognised early on that sports teach valuable life skills, such as teamwork, goal-setting, and time-management, and while these complement academic and cultural programmes, the sports’ themselves provide learners with the additional benefits of physical activity, such as stress relief, improved mood, and better overall wellbeing.

For this reason, the school implemented a Sports Policy that has made sports compulsory for Grade 8 and 9 learners. The policy allows learners to choose from a wide range of sports, including both competitive and social options. The athletic instruction itself provides one structured and one unstructured sports lesson every 10 days, meaning students have both organised and creative opportunities within the programme.

In addition to contributing to its ongoing line of top-level, nationally- and internationally-recognised athletes, the impact of the school's approach can be seen in the quality friendships, sense of belonging, and overall sense of well-being experienced by the learners.

If Rustenburg Girls' High School wins the World's Best School Prize for Supporting Healthy Lives, the school intends to upgrade facilities and equipment to increase its focus on promoting healthy lives. The school will also continue to open up its facilities to other schools that may not have access to similar resources. Additionally, some of the prize money will be allocated to school priority projects, which will enhance the experience for all learners at Rustenburg Girls' High School and further promote healthy living.