Reference: Published by Oyisa Sondlo Mzileni (Mail&Guardian), 12 February 2024
Every January is both exciting and nerve-racking as high school students, parents, and teachers await the results of the matriculation exam. These findings are used to assess the quality and advancement of South Africa’s educational system.
The government has repeatedly pushed the notion that our education system is improving based on annual matric pass rates. For example, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga stated that 572 983 applicants completed the 2023 matric tests, with an overall pass percentage of 82.9%, the highest reported since 1994.
Taking these data at face value gives the idea that there is progress in our public school system. However, this conceals major inequities in public education; the administration has mastered the skill of concealing the genuine picture of the situation. The annual televised spectacle and the surface-level computation of our matric pass rates are politically motivated. This methodology aligns with both politicians’ election goals and school principals’ ideals. The plight of the students and their families is secondary.
In example, the emphasis on matric scores obscures other important components of public education. First, we don’t know what kind of learners the system creates or what they’ve learned. Second, we don’t know whether the system develops learners with appropriate skills. Third, the system fails to account for the whereabouts of millions of people who do not complete matric within the 12-year timeframe. Fourth, we are not told about the strategies that certain schools use to eliminate “underperforming learners” in lower grades.
In other words, we don’t know the important elements about public education.
This inhibits us from having an appropriate discussion about our public education. Investigating these things further would reveal other structural difficulties that the administration has failed to address in accordance with our democracy’s aspirations. These include overcrowded classrooms, insufficient teachers, poor administration, defunding, undertrained teachers, and resource misallocation. All of them undermine public education, preventing it from achieving its long-term goal of eradicating inequality.
The yearly January matric results announcements do not address these issues since they need government personnel to perform well and diligently on a daily basis. Furthermore, comprehensive planning is required at all levels of the system, from early childhood development (ECD) to matriculation. Instead, the easier option—hiding the facts and claiming easy victories—is selected.
However, evidence cannot be hidden. Many matriculants’ educations are of poor quality because the problem is overlooked from the start. According to the study of the 2030 Reading Panel, chaired by Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, students in grades R and 2 had difficulty retaining basic alphabetic order. Furthermore, according to the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, 82% of fourth-grade students are unable to read with meaning.
These results are alarming, and it’s no surprise that the 2022 National Senior Certificate Diagnostic Report indicated that only 28% of matric students who passed in 2022 had a mark of 50% or above in mathematics and physical science. The report also stated that these two disciplines performed poorly on all assessment problems requiring abstract thinking and problem-solving skills.
In university terms, where a pass grade is set at 50%, this means that 72% of matric students who took the 2022 final matric paper in mathematics and physical science failed. These problems are encountered at the matric level, but they originated at the ECD level. Overinvestment in matric learners as a solution to our public education crisis is the wrong approach, and it will continue to undermine the system’s products.
A more productive intervention to address this issue will necessitate stronger cooperation among all stakeholders at all levels. To construct a successful public education system, parents, students, teachers, the government, business, and civil society must all envision it and insist that it be closely linked and resourced.
There must be a financial framework that coordinates all levels of public education, as well as a symbiotic articulation of a shared curriculum with specific skills at the foundational, intermediate, and senior stages. This starts with emphasizing the ECD level, where youngsters will be taught to enjoy reading, writing, calculating, speaking, and problem-solving.
Literacy and numeracy should be the foundations of children’s development at home and at school. These are the challenging activities that must be accomplished to improve education.
If we are serious about ending apartheid disparities, we must abandon these frivolous political events that claim easy victories and disguise problems at the expense of our children’s futures.