Eastern Cape bottom of class – again
Picture: Sunday Times
Matric results slightly higher, but five districts score pass rates under 50%
The Eastern Cape’s 2016 matric results are slightly up from last year but the province is still at the bottom of the class nationally.
Graaff-Reinet achieved the top marks in physical science nationally and Cradock was top overall in the Eastern Cape – but the province as a whole foundered, with the only five districts nationally that obtained a pass rate of under 50%.
Announcing the National Senior Certificate exam results last night in Johannesburg, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga hailed the improvement in science and maths marks by black pupils and the overall improvement in the pass rate, despite a record 828 000 pupils who wrote the exams.
Focusing on the overall pass rate, inclusive of progressed pupils – those pushed through to matric after failing Grade 11 more than once – she said seven of the nine provinces had improved, with only KwaZulu- Natal and Mpumalanga slipping. The Eastern Cape improved from 56.8% in 2015 to 59.3%.
The pass rate of the Eastern Cape, which continues to languish at the bottom of the pile, was 3.2 percentage points lower than that of Limpopo, which came in second last, and a whopping 28.9 percentage points below front-runner the Free State.
The Eastern Cape also improved when progressed pupils were excluded from the results, with a 63.3% pass rate, up 1.1% from 2015 – but still found itself stone last out of all the provinces.
Even more worrying to provincial legislature education portfolio committee chairman Fundile Gade was the fact that 10 000 matric pupils dropped out during the course of the year in the province.
“We had registered 92 000 pupils at the beginning of the year, but only 82 000 wrote,” he said.
“My first concern is those missing 10 000. Where did they go?”
Gade said pupils who had dropped out had “the potential to contribute to the levels of illiteracy in the province”. He also said that interventions put in place following the dismal 2015 results seemed not to have worked and a major focus needed to be on the functionality of schools.
“There are 277 schools [in the province] that are dysfunctional and they let us down,” he said.
Another concern was the five districts in the province that had less than a 50% pass rate.
“My greatest interest tomorrow will be seeing if those five districts fall into the 12 districts that do not have district directors,” Gade said.
Praising Holy Cross in Mthatha which produced the country’s top pupil in the Quintile 3 category, Gade said the institutional leadership of the province should look at the training of principals.
He said it was clear that with good leadership schools could achieve.
“It was not easy for Holy Cross.
“I was there after June and they were complaining of a lack of 12 to 14 classrooms, but they achieved the top pupil in the country.”
DA shadow education minister Edmund van Vuuren said while he was overjoyed at the 2.2 percentage point increase in the pass rate, he was sad that five of the worst districts in the country were from the Eastern Cape.
He said a major problem in the province was the implementation of plans.
“Every year, they [education officials] put good plans on the table but there are problems implementing them,” he said.
“If they had implemented them, we would have seen a higher increase.”
Van Vuuren made reference to the education department’s promises to assist progressed pupils, the rationalisation of schools and visits to poor-performing schools.
“They [education officials] promised to visit 4 150 schools but, by the end of June, had only been to 343.
“If they had visited all of them and seen what problems they had, it could have made a big difference.
“They also had a plan to introduce mentors, former principals, to poor-performing schools but only did this in late October and early November. “Now how can you expect these mentors to help those schools achieve their goals so late?”
The department’s targets of a 1% absenteeism rate for teachers and a 2% rate for pupils had also not been met.
NMMU education expert Shervani Pillay said the province’s results were deeply disappointing.
She said that for years systemic and structural problems had been pointed to as the reason for the Eastern Cape’s poor performance but it was time to let go of that excuse. “We see the same problems in other provinces that have managed to improve,” Pillay said
She said poor implementation of good plans was to blame.
“Nothing substantive is being done. There is still a shortage of teachers [and] teachers not being paid, and this is not being addressed.”
Pointing to the many protests against a lack of teachers, she said: “You can’t have top-class interventions when you don’t have enough teachers.
“There needs to be a more considered approach to interventions.
“The national plans are good, but how do you bring them together? There is shallow implementation.
“The time has come for a much more deep-seated, qualitative approach.”
Motshekga said the matric results were an important barometer for her department as they sought to shape and improve the country’s education system.
Although the results had improved, it was clear that to make a sustained difference the quality of learning and teaching in the early grades had to be improved, she said.
Speaking in support of the department’s controversial progressed learner policy, she said last year’s matrics had included the largest number of progressed pupils since the policy was instituted in 2013.
The overall improvement in the pass rate despite this factor showed the department was on the right track, she said.
Instead of being relegated to high school dropouts, the progressed pupils who had now passed had the opportunity to further their education at university or technical and vocational colleges.
“We made this intervention in line with the call by the National Development Plan for a 90% increase in learner retention.
“An inclusive education system contributes to an inclusive economy.”
Hailing a “system on the rise”, the minister said 33 521 pupils had achieved marks of 60% or more for maths over the 30 314 in 2014 and 31 812 in 2015.
“This is important as it means more learners get to qualify for maths-oriented programmes at university and they are hence equipped to fill critical gaps in the economy.”
She said by far the biggest movement within this area was the improvement by black pupils.
Of the 1 709 more pupils who achieved more than 60% for maths in 2016 over 2015, 1 308 of them were black pupils.
“The trend points to a narrowing of the serious race-based inequalities in schools,” Motshekga said.
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