As the year winds down and our team enjoys a well-deserved break, we’re taking a moment to look back and celebrate a truly impactful year. From a special ministerial visit to our Cape Town classes to the vibrant energy in every session, 2025 was powered by the dedication of our team, interns, and the thousands of young minds we reached.

The Heart of Our Work: Classrooms Full of Discovery

This year, our after-school maths classes brought the Numeric Effect to life for over 2,700 learners across 37 partner schools in Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Durban. More than improving marks, our greatest achievement is showing that classrooms (and maths) can be truly fun and engaging.

The proof is in the progress: through the passionate work of our programs team and teaching interns, we helped our Grade 7 learners improve their maths marks by an average of 15%. This year, they tackled favourite topics like:

1. Order of Operations
2. Long Division
3. Integers
4. Exponents
5. Word Problems
6. Measurements
7. Common Factors
8. Percentages
9. Divisibility Rules
10. Area of Triangles

Building the Next Generation of Educators

Our mission extends beyond learners to those who will guide them. This year:

• 203 future teachers participated in our year-long teaching internship, gaining vital mentorship.
• 69 newly qualified teachers (NQTs) joined our dedicated skills workshops and community sessions, supported by our new NQT Committee.
• We also began preparing for the future, running training camps for the 2026 cohort of teaching interns.

Highlights Beyond the Classroom

We went beyond just our key programs:

• Hosted 3 simultaneous Winter Maths Camps at the University of Cape Town, University of Johannesburg, and the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
• Ran two training workshops in partnership with the University of Johannesburg and the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

The Soundtrack of Our Year

Of course, a Numeric class is anything but quiet! Our sessions were powered by energetic brain breaks. This year’s unofficial playlist featured hits on repeat like:

1. Give Me Ndwi
2. Rain Clap
3. Mingle
4. If You Wanna Be a Penguin
5. How Funky is Your Chicken
6. We Love Math
7. All the Milkshakes
8. Hey Jiggles
9. Are You Ready?
10. …and the ever-popular Baby Shark!

A Heartfelt Thank You to Our Partners & Supporters

None of this would be possible without you. To our 37 partner schools across three cities: thank you for your trust and collaboration. To the universities that we work with: your partnership is invaluable in inspiring future graduates. And to every donor, funder, and champion of the Numeric Effect: your belief fuels this work. Together, we reached over 3,000 young South Africans, proving that with the right support, they can achieve anything.

Here’s to a restful break and an even brighter 2026!