Challenge
Rondebosch Boys' High School prides itself on individualised attention - it's at the heart of everything they do. But with 900+ boys, six classes per grade, and many subjects where a single teacher handles all content and marking, this commitment was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.
The mathematics was daunting: close to 200 students per grade, with teachers spending countless hours marking instead of connecting with students. As Louise Nivison, their IT Integrator, explains: "The biggest problem we had was scale, and being able to effectively deliver curriculum with personalised feedback and individual attention on such a large scale."
How Mindjoy Partners with Rondebosch Boys' High School
Together we've built scalable personalised learning based on Rondebosch's philosophy that technology should enhance teaching, not replace it:
- Strategic pilot approach - Started with Life Orientation and Technology subjects to test implementation across both humanities and STEM content
- Champion-led implementation - Louise (who teaches Technology) identified a colleague (teaching Life Orientation) who needed support with marking workload and personally guided the setup, demonstrating peer-to-peer support in technology adoption
- Collaborative solution development - Having a close partnership with continuous feedback from the educators and hands-on support from the Mindjoy team, allowed for rapid response in implementing solutions that catered to school-specific needs
- Teacher mindset alignment - Facilitating Professional Development sessions showing educators how to embrace AI technology while staying true to their teaching methods
Impact
Through strategic partnership with Mindjoy, Rondebosch Boys’ High has enhanced their approach to personalised education at scale:
- 20 minutes saved daily per teacher - Equivalent to unlocking 1 hour+ weekly for meaningful student interaction
- Enhanced student engagement - Students engage more deeply with their school work, asking sophisticated, in-depth questions which allow them to move beyond surface-level understanding
- Instant platform adoption - Students found the platform to be intuitive to use, which meant there wasn’t a need for running student training on how to use Mindjoy.
- Scalable individual attention - Personalised feedback across different subjects for hundreds of students without compromising quality
Based on these results, Rondebosch Boys’ High School is expanding Mindjoy across additional subjects and grade levels, with plans to use Mindjoy across departments for informal & continuous assessment.
Inspiration for schools like Rondebosch Boy’s High
Louise Nivison's advice for other South African government schools considering AI-enhanced learning tools:
"If I am ever going to motivate for any form of tool in a school like ours where budget is a problem, I have to ensure that tool has multiple applications across various subject areas. You have to weigh up teachers' time as part of your cost effectiveness - if I can save a teacher 20 minutes a day marking, that's an hour-a-week longer they have for interacting with school sports programs, working with struggling kids, or speaking with parents. The impact on teacher well-being is huge."
The key is finding technology that enhances human learning rather than replacing teachers - scaling teacher impact rather than replacing teacher connection.