Cape Town - This year’s matric class has performed worse than the 2014 group, with the pass rate in several subjects, including accounting and mathematical literacy, taking a significant drop.
The performance of pupils who were progressed to Grade 12, without meeting the pass requirements for Grade 11, are partly to blame for the higher failure rate, but Professor John Volmink, the chairman of the Umalusi council, said this did not fully explain the drop in performance.
The policy on progression was implemented in 2013 to prevent pupils from being retained in the same school phase (of three years) for more than four years, and has received much criticism from principals.
At a press conference on Wednesday where Umalusi gave the go-ahead for the release of the matric results next week, Volmink said about 66 000 of this year’s full-time candidates, representing about 10 percent of the cohort, were pupils who had been progressed.
“However, our analysis based on the raw scores of the 2015 results demonstrates that the performance of progressed learners accounts for an increase in the failure rate of at most 3.5 percent.”
He said in most of the high-enrolment subjects, the increased failure rate compared to 2014 exceeded 3.5 percent.
“In other words, if we exclude the progressed learners, the class of 2015 still performed worse than the class of 2014.
“The drop in performance is particularly pronounced in the following subjects: accounting, geography, history and mathematical literacy.”
He said the cognitive demand of the exams papers could have been a contributing factor to the poorer performance.
“Generally, by design, the standard of the papers have improved and catered for more challenging questions as compared to 2014.”
Other possible contributing factors could include an improvement in marking and an increased vigilance from the Department of Basic Education and provincial education departments to prevent incidences of mass copying.
Volmink said 59 subjects had been presented to Umalusi for standardisation. After moderation, raw marks were accepted for 29 of these subjects.
Upward adjustments were made in the remaining 30 subjects.
He said this meant moderation with some upward shift to the average historical pupil performance profile.
While there had been a reduction in the number of group copying cases compared to last year, Volmink said a number of new schools had been implicated in group copying.
Twenty-six cases of alleged group copying had been reported in Gauteng (six cases), 12 in KwaZulu-Natal, one in Limpopo and seven in Mpumalanga.
“We want to extend a serious warning to those who are implicated that drastic measures will be taken against them.”
The Department of Basic Education welcomed Umalusi’s approval of the results.
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga is expected to release the national and provincial results on January 5, while candidates can collect their results at their schools at noon the next day.
Basil Manuel, the president of the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of SA, said a honest debate on progression was needed and should involve “the people on the ground”.
“We need to hear from the teachers what the real problems are that they face in terms of progression.”
Dr Jonathan Clark, the director of UCT’s Schools Development Unit, said he didn’t see the value in progressing the pupils, adding the impact thereof on the results would be significant.
Last year’s national matric pass rate was 75.8 percent, compared to 78.2 percent in 2013.
Cape Argus
* Use IOL’s Facebook and Twitter pages to comment on our stories. See links below.