The Grahamstown Foundation and the
SA African Council for English Education
have announced that the theme for the
49th National English Olympiad will be “Resilience”.
The Olympiad will be based on an anthology of prose memoirs by South African and African writers.
The examination date will be 5 March 2024.
NB – The deadline for entries is 30 September 2023.
South African, Damon Galgut was recently announced the 2021 winner of Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize Award, for his book The Promise.
SACEE is proud to say that Damon won the English Olympiad in his Standard 9 year, in 1980. Dr Venter recalls calling the quietly-spoken young man in his Pretoria Boys’ High uniform to receive his prize. SACEE would like to congratulate him on this wonderful achievement, hoping that in some way the English Olympiad encouraged Damon on his literary career.
‘The Promise is a novel about a white family with a farm outside of Pretoria. Covering the late apartheid era through to Jacob Zuma’s presidency, Galgut’s book shows a family’s growing disintegration as the country emerges into democracy.
The New Yorker called it “remarkable”.’ – News 24
For the full article please click on the following link:
The theme of the 48th English Olympiad, examined in March 2023, was ‘Care and Compassion’, for which a prescribed mixed-genre anthology (A Better World) and a study guide were published by the Eastern Cape Branch of SACEE.
The Chief Examiner for the 48th Olympiad was Dr Diana McDermott, and the Assistant Examiners were Liz Herselman (Home Language) and Tasneem Dolley (First Additional Language).
Congratulations to the 2023 English Olympiad Winners!
The complete list of the Top 100 (Home Language) results, in rank order, is available here.
First Additional Language (FAL) Top 20 in RANK ORDER: