Serious concerns raised about the quality of 2016’s matric passes
Naptosa (The National Professional Teachers Organisation of South Africa) executive director Basil Manuel has raised concerns as to the quality of passes of 2016’s matriculants, Times Live reports.
While Naptosa expects a slight increase in the percentage of matrics who passed in 2016‚ up from 70.7% in 2015, “a large increase would be suspicious,” said Manuel. “We predict a slight increase in pass mark results‚ but Naptosa still believes the quality of passes is what really matters.”
This follows the announcement by regulatory-body Umalusi stating that 2016’s Maths and Maths Literacy results are “very poor” even by previous year’s standards. The matter needs to be investigated – were 70% of those who wrote the Maths Literacy exam had passed‚ but that had dropped to 35%.,” said Manuel.
Education professor Elizabeth Walton‚ of the University of the Witwatersrand agreed with Manuel, saying: “To just talk about the pass rate‚ I don’t think we’re learning an awful lot about the system reporting [results] at that level. It doesn’t really tell us how we could be improving the system. Far more useful questions [to ask] are about subjects in particular.”
However Walton pointed to longstanding issues with the maths subjects stemming back to apartheid.
“There aren’t any quick fixes. We need incremental improvement in the lower grades year to year‚” said Walton. “We need interventions in the foundation and intermediate phases of school [primary school]. We can’t pick up problems in Grade 9‚ start interventions then and expect to see results.”
This message was echoed by NGO Equal Education in a statement on Wednesday cautioning that the pass rate reflects only the performance of those learners who managed to stay in school for 12 years, and obscures how many dropped out along the way.
“Increases and decreases in the annual matric pass rate may be influenced by changes in various factors. A decrease in the dropout rate could contribute to an increase in the real number of learners passing matric, but a decrease in the overall pass rate,” reads the statement.
“Policy decisions such as the criteria for promoting learners from one grade to the next, or how exam quality watchdog Umalusi decides to standardise matric results across years, has little relation to the quality of learning outcomes but can lead to a drop or increase in pass rates.”
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