East London – The MEC for Education in the Eastern Cape Mandla Makapula has defended the poor matric results in his province and the fact that it has again finished bottom of the provincial pile by saying that all the provinces, with the exception of the Western Cape, had seen a decline in the percentage pass rate for the class of 2015.
Makapula, speaking at a briefing at the Education Leadership Institute in East London on Wednesday, said the 2015 provincial pass rate was a major setback and called for an urgent, honest and systematic introspection.
Eastern Cape students obtained a 56.8 percent pass rate in the National Senior Certificate examinations, a decline of 8.6 percent from the previous year.
However, despite the dismal results which saw the Eastern Cape again occupy the bottom rung out of the nine provinces, Makapula said that despite challenges, progress was being made.
“This decline can be attributed to many factors, the most widely accepted being the learners were not adequately prepared to contend with increased cognitively demanding question papers for all subjects and the impact of the progressed learners in the system,” said Makapula.
Makapula added that “the total number of distinctions achieved in the province has increased from 11,517 in 2014 to 12,422 in 2015, a significant qualitative improvement from the 7,398 distinctions achieved in 2008”.
The top performing districts for 2015 included Cradock with a pass rate of 71.6 percent, which constituted a drop of 11.3 percent from the previous year, Uitenhage at 69 percent, which represented a drop of 6.5 percent and Port Elizabeth at 66.0 percent, a drop of 8.3 percent.
The three worst performing districts included Lady Frere, which regressed from 63.9 percent in 2014 to 46.3 percent in 2015. Lusikisiki also recorded a significant drop to 47.2 percent while the most significant decline of all was Qumbu at 47.9 percent in 2015, a 27.2 percent decline from its 2014 performance.
Makapula further noted that there were two schools in King William’s Town that recorded a zero percentage pass rate.
Makapula said the provincial education department still continued to face structural and systematic challenges that were in turn compounded by “broader historical and the apartheid political economy legacy challenges”.
“The negative effects of population migration patterns in search of greener pastures continue to create instability of learner numbers in the system, hence problem of imbalance between Post Provisioning Norms and budgets for the compensation of employees,” said Makapula.
He added that the impact of instability was “huge” on teacher demand and supply in the province and that the department had experienced unprecedented demands for Afrikaans mother tongue and mathematics teachers who were not always in ready supply.
But despite the matric pass rate also being at its lowest in six years, Makapula said that on the bright side, the department had reworked its learner support strategy and in addition had launched a Matric Countdown support program in Butterworth early last year.
He outlined extended support programs which included telematics centres attached to schools, 80 000 subject study guides and study tip material distributed to all schools with a grade 12 class, winter and spring schools in all 23 districts to support revision, as well as Saturday contact classes hosted by all 405 schools that obtained a 60 percent and below pass mark previously.
African News Agency
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