The perennial brouhaha over the matric results and the attendant quibbling over the 30% pass rate are both misplaced as they divert attention from the real challenges facing the education system.
The SA education system is bedevilled by innumerable challenges that include inter alia poorly trained teachers, dismal leadership, overcrowded classrooms and low discipline.
The focus on matric results also ignores the fundamental role of the early childhood development (ECD) phase in the enhancement of the quality of an education system. School begins at grade R and the foundation laid during this early stage has a formative impact on the pupils, which imparts on them a life-long attitude to learning.
The obsession with matric somewhat presupposes that when school finishes at the end of matric, so does learning, which is a negation of the life-long learning philosophy. Passing matric is viewed as the holy grail of the education system, a pinnacle or be and end all, so to say. It was therefore refreshing to read through the usually bumbling Sadtu statement on the release of the 2021 matric results.
“Importantly, it remains our position that the matric results are being unnecessarily elevated into a central assessment tool for the efficiency of our education system. We believe that the media hype around the matric results that influences the national discourse is misplaced and rather short-sighted,” read the statement.
It continued in the same mature vein: “The learning journey is composed of 12 formal grades and the ECD phase, they are equally important as part of the value chain. The most efficient education systems in the world have a particular focus on ECD.”
One hopes such a progressive statement signals a change of stance from Sadtu that it commits itself to becoming a part of the solution by cleaning its own house and to eliminate traces of ill-discipline which have become the hallmark of the largest teachers' union and in the public sector.
It is imperative that the powers that be in education seek to fix the situation by among others improving the quality of teacher training systems. No education system can transcend the quality of its teachers.
There need to be systems in place to ensure that schools are staffed by good principals who can add value and ensure that the goals of the national development plan (NDP) are achieved. The stranglehold of Sadtu regarding the appointment of school managers should be eradicated, with merit made the sole criterion for appointment as a principal.
The capture of the GDE by Sadtu should be a thing of the past. Regarding the 30% pass rate it needs to be said the issue has been riddled with misconception about what constitutes a matric pass.
The department has gone to great lengths to explain particularly the difference between the overall matric pass and subject pass requirements. It suffices to state that a 30% matric pass is a myth that is deliberately perpetuated either for political reasons or a gross ignorance of how the system works.
A matric pass is constituted by four levels of difficulty with the lowest being a National Senior Certificate (NSC) certificate and the highest a Bachelor pass. For the NSC, a pupil can only present 30% in four and not all seven subjects while for a Bachelor pass, only two subjects can be presented at 30%. It is therefore not true that pupils can pass matric with 30% overall.
The quibbling over the 30% indicates a misconception about schools being there only for the accumulation of knowledge. It must be said that those arguing for the dropping of the 30% “pass rate” such as the leader of One South Africa Movement, Mmusi Maimane, do so from a good place. For them it is about grades, which are viewed as equating to what the pupils have learnt and know.
Such a perception ignores the basic competencies that a schooling system should impart to its users. These include the ability to communicate effectively, to learn to solve problems and to work alongside fellow citizens. Increasing the pass mark will not magically improve the quality of learning or that of teaching. Insisting on the increasing of the pass mark will lead to assessment systems losing credibility and authenticity.
This could happen, when teachers feeling pressurised to perform within the threshold, will then teach only content which will get pupils over such a pass threshold. The concern over the 30% pass mark communicates a message that passing matric is the main learning goal. Matric certainly cannot be seen as the end of the learning journey.
The focus of education should be on the quality. A preoccupation with the pass mark diverts attention from efforts to improve the quality of the curriculum, assessment, teaching and learning. The main challenge for our education system is to ensure that quality permeates the entire system from ECD and produces pupils who can navigate new paradigms either through higher education, industry or entrepreneurship.
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