John Gardener - Robert Gray Award

The Robert Gray Medal Award, which is described as the most prestigious award that a school can bestow on an old boy of Bishops, was awarded to John Gardener, resident at Cle Du Cap.

John received the Robert Gray Medal Award for his remarkable work as an educator and sports coach at Bishops. He was also a teacher at Wynberg Boys and Bishops, Headmaster of Kingswood College in Grahamstown and Principal at Bishops, and Chairman of the African Scholars’ Fund. In his retirement, John was also Chairman of the Western Cape Independent Schools Association of Southern Africa (ISASA) consisting of representatives of the region's school governing bodies. He was also involved in the design of a school quality assurance system for the Independent Quality Assurance Agency (IQAA) where he contributed much through his mentoring work in schools.

John, who was born in 1930, continued for many years in his capacity as mentor, counsellor and coach in his specialist professional field. He has also done a lot of journalistic writing for different publications and websites including many years of quarterly articles for the ISASA magazine as well as articles on the Rugby 365 website. He is sometimes known as ‘Johnopedia’ for his specialist knowledge as an editor, sports reporter, cryptographer, lyricist, reviewer, arbiter of grammatical disputes and as a school historian. A little-known fact is that he has also written over 50 hymns.