Cape Town - Education officials have moved into action after it was revealed by Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga that one in four high schools were failing to offer mathematics as a subject due to the “non-availability” of qualified competent maths teachers in grades 10 to 12.
Her department has declared that it is unacceptable for any public mainstream high school not to offer mathematics.
The department said it had initiated intensive training for maths teachers, issued textbooks to schools that were re-introducing the subject in Grade 10 and implemented other support measures to address the lack of maths instruction during the Further Education and Training (FET) phase (grades 10 to 12).
It said on Thursday that the number of schools not offering maths “has already been drastically reduced”.
Motshekga’s revelation about the shortfall in maths instruction was based on information gleaned from the Annual School Survey of 2013.
This showed that mathematics was only being offered in 75 percent of the country’s high schools.
The “non-availability” of qualified competent maths teachers for the FET phase and the fact that in some rural schools there were too few maths pupils to appoint a teacher were among the reasons given for why schools were not offering maths.
On Thursday, Motshekga’s department said that many schools, had “reintroduced mathematics” this year.
VG Govender, president of the Association for Mathematics Education of South Africa, said that the annual national assessment results for maths for 2012 to 2014 showed that pupils were not coping with mathematics in Grade 9 and this was carried into the FET phase.
He said various ways of supporting schools to offer mathematics needed to be looked at and implemented.
”More learners should be doing mathematics in the FET phase than is currently the case,” he said.
He said a number of rural schools do not have qualified maths teachers in the FET phase.
“It means that few or no learners take mathematics at these schools.
“What is crucial is to appoint newly qualified mathematics teachers into schools which do not offer mathematics at present.”
“It deprives learners in these communities of doing mathematics in the FET phase, thereby severely restricting them from high-powered careers in science and engineering.
“An immediate solution would be to twin schools in these areas to allow all those with potential to take mathematics.”
He said the distance between schools could, however, prove to be an obstacle.
“Provincial departments of education could provide transport to bus learners to schools where mathematics is offered as a subject in Grade 12,” Govender said.
Cape Argus