Durban - Teachers’ unions have weighed in on the sag in the national matric pass rate with five out of nine provinces showing worse results than last year.
The pass rate dropped to 75.8 percent from last year’s 78.2 percent.
The National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of SA (Naptosa), expressed concern about the almost 800 000 pupils who enrolled in grade 1 in 2003, who did not sit for the 2014 NSC exam.
“That only approximately 42.5 percent of the cohort of 1 252 071 learners who enrolled in Grade 1 in 2003 sat for the 2014 NSC examination is distressing,” said president Basil Manuel.
“In 2013 there were 797 304 Grade 11 learners. Where have the 264 751 learners gone? Naptosa acknowledges the various reasons provided for the 50 percent-plus drop-out of learners from Grade 1 to Grade 12, but does not accept it. We are doing the children of South Africa a great injustice” he said.
The SA Democratic Teachers Union agreed, saying, “A true reflection is that the system managed to produce less than 20 percent potential university entrants. The rest of the learners achieved low quality passes restricting further development of these learners.”
In a statement, the union also urged the department to “tone down on the misleading euphoria”.
Last year also marked the completion of the implementation of the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (Caps) with the 2014 matric class being the first to write this exam for the National Senior Certificate. This curriculum change had caused the decline in the national pass rate, National Teachers Union (Natu) spokesman Allen Thompson.
“There was a lot of uncertainty. For example, maths paper three was optional but last year it was compulsory. Learners did not know what to expect.” Thompson said examiners, moderators, subject advisers and even teachers were also “novices”.
“We are hoping that in the years to come there will be stability and that the pass rate in turn will improve.”
Professor Sarah Gravett, executive dean of the University of Joburg’s education faculty, also pointed to the Caps curriculum.
“What has happened in Caps is the existing curriculum was in some cases extended, in some cases more depth was added, for example, in physical science,” she said.
“But there is indeed a raising of the cognitive demand in the examination process of many subjects generally, so even though it is not a new curriculum, there are some subjects where a higher cognitive demand is placed on learners.”
Professor Veronica McKay, acting dean of education at Unisa, also partly attributed the drop to the curriculum change.
“Caps are very specific. They determine what content needs to be taught each term. For matric learners they indicate what content should be taught every fortnight.”
Because Caps specified content, the workload was higher than with outcome-based education (OBE), which depended on the teacher’s interpretation of the learning outcome.
Naptosa was also concerned by the decline in the quality of passes, particularly the decline in bachelor’s passes, to 28.3 percent last year from 30.6 percent in 2013.
AfriForum pointed to the drop-out rate, saying it meant less than 45 percent of those who started school wrote matric.
The causes for the drop-out rate include a lack of mother-language education, textbook delivery problems, the paralysing actions by some education unions, inadequate teacher training, dysfunctional schools and poor discipline, said AfriForum.
Political parties across the spectrum were unhappy with the drop.
The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) said the results highlighted “serious deficiencies” in the system.
“The mindset of begging for work after 12 years of training, rather than creating opportunities, is a shame,” said PAC deputy president Sbusiso Xaba.
The party was convinced that failure at rural schools was due to the language barrier rather than subject comprehension, as the bottom provinces – the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and the Northern Cape – have large rural populations.
Naptosa’s KZN chief executive, Anthony Pierce, said his immediate response to the province was “something is rotten in the State of Denmark” – borrowing a line from William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.
“Something is wrong in the province… we are concerned about KZN because we see places like the Eastern Cape have done better in learner performance. Part of the problem with KZN is that we have an advisory service that advises itself (and not teachers); who are stuck in offices… They are not getting out to schools,” he said.
Pierce said money was a factor in the province; however teachers had been assisted with numerous workshops.
“How many more workshops must be conducted? Teachers need to do more than they are,” he said.
Pierce said KZN needed to engage in “soul searching” and the MEC had to live up to the promises made when she took over office from Premier Senzo Mchunu.
National Teachers Union (Natu) spokesman Allen Thompson also singled out KZN for “committing suicide by failing to employ educators”.
“KZN has not been employing for the past seven years, like the Eastern Cape, and the effect is clear in the significant drop in the results. It is very disappointing” he said.
Daily News and The Star