Concern mounts over Grade 12 pupils' poor maths results

Published Jan 6, 2020

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Durban - The exams quality assurance body, Umalusi, has called for detailed research to be conducted to explain the reasons Grade 12 pupils continue to struggle in maths.

The Council for Quality Assurance in General and Further Education and Training (Umalusi) spoke on Friday, saying the 2018 Grade 12 class had failed to improve the maths pass rate from last year.

The organisation approved the release of the 2019 national exams results after successfully conducting the quality assurance of the management and administration of the examinations.

Umalusi’s senior manager for public relations and communications, Lucky Ditaunyane, said on Sunday that the council had compared the performance in maths with the performance in other gateway subjects like maths literacy and life science.

“While there had been an improvement in the other subjects, maths remained the same, it hasn’t moved the needle. The marks are not better and they’re not getting worse,” he said.

The matric class of 2017 saw a pass rate of 51.9% with a total of 127197 pupils achieving a pass in maths.

Ditaunyane said the council believed that research should be conducted to identify the challenges.

“That is something that the Department of Basic Education should have to get involved in. Why are pupils struggling and in which topics?

“Umalusi has its own research unit and this is something we’re going to get involved in,” he said. He said they found the claims made by parents and pupils that maths papers were too difficult to be untrue.

“Our experts looked into these claims and we found they had no basis. The papers were at the same standard as last year,” he said.

University of KwaZulu-Natal education expert Professor Labby Ramrathan said pupils needed to rid themselves of the perception that maths was difficult as that undermined their performance before they even wrote.

“People have an innate ability to learn, so pupils need to deal with the psychology behind this. There are pupils who get a 100% pass in maths, how is that possible?” he asked.

He said there were other challenges, that included the quality of teaching, the language and the ability to grasp key concepts, that impacted on the pass rate.

Ramrathan said there were educators teaching maths who were not specialists in the field, and therefore struggled to impart the necessary knowledge.

“It’s important for teachers to continuously develop themselves and engage with their peers.”

He said pupils should also play their part and realise that maths needed to be continuously practised.

Basic Education spokesperson Elijah Mhlanga said the department believed that there was improvement in the results.

“We are continuously improving. Even if we were to get 100%, we’d continue to work to improve and we’d continue to train our teachers,” he said.

He said much work needed to be done across all subjects.

Muzi Mahlambi, of the KwaZuluNatal Education Department, said it would wait for the breakdown in numbers to see how it fared.

In a statement, Umalusi also commended the positives in the exams, including the improvement in other subjects and the smooth running of the exams.

“We note with appreciation the improvement in learner performance in subjects such as geography, physical science and maths literacy. This is an indication of a maturing system in which expectations regarding curriculum and assessment standards are becoming more entrenched in the system.

“The quality of question papers is a very important aspect of the integrity and credibility of the exam. It’s therefore pleasing to see a marked improvement in the overall quality of question papers across the assessment bodies, as more papers are approved after first or second submission to external moderators,” it said. 

The Mercury

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