/ 30 December 2008

Matrics achieve 62,5% pass rate in 2008

The country’s 2008 matric class received a pass rate of 62,5 %, Education Minister Naledi Pandor said on Tuesday.

Of the 533 561 candidates with a full set of results, 333 681 candidates, or 62,5%, met the requirements for a National Senior Certificate, she told a press briefing in Pretoria.

She added that 589 912 candidates had written the 2008 examinations and that she was reporting on the results of only 533 561 candidates.

Pandor said that there were 56 810 candidates with incomplete results. This, she said, was due to ”outstanding internal marks, oral or practical requirements or pending irregularity investigations”.

”The failure to provide results for all candidates is extremely worrying,” Pandor said.

The minister pointed out that it was important to avoid the temptation to make simple comparisons between the previous exam and the new one.

She said that while she would indeed signal comparisons, she did so with the caution ”that we have entered a new phase of school-leaving examinations in South Africa”.

Pandor said that in 2008, 107 462 candidates — or 20,2% — achieved the minimum pass rate required for entry to undergraduate study at university.

This compared with 16%, or 85 000, in 2007.

The requirement was a minimum of four subjects at 50% or above and a maximum of two subjects below 50%.

Pandor said that 124 000 candidates had achieved the minimum pass required for entry to a diploma or a non-degree programme at university or a university of technology;.

The requirement was four subjects at 40% or above and a maximum of two subjects below 40%.

Cause for concern
Meanwhile, the drop in the matric pass rate from 65% last year to 62,5 % is cause for concern, the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) said on Tuesday.

”We believe that to maintain the momentum for increased access, we have to understand and address the factors which lead to dropout and failure,” Sadtu president Thobile Ntola said in a statement.

”Our sense is that issues of historical disadvantage and poverty associated with race, class and the rural-urban divide, and uneven support and poor management, especially in some districts and provinces, are crucial here, and we would expect the Department of Education to deepen its analysis in this respect,” he said.

Pointing out that more than 40 % of pupils never reached matric, Sadtu asked who made up this group, whether they joined the ranks of the unemployed and what could be done to turn around the situation.

It also asked what support there was for the pupils who failed matric this year, demanding that adequate resources be made available to them for rewriting.

Sadtu did, however, express encouragement at the number of candidates this year and that a higher percentage of them qualified for tertiary education than last year.

”Higher education institutions need to gear up to accept these increased numbers,” said Ntola in congratulating successful candidates, their families, teachers and examiners.

”For those students from poor communities who pass and achieve endorsements, much more needs to be done to assist access to tertiary institutions,” he said.

Sadtu also praised the new Outcomes Based Education (OBE) curriculum — the matriculants who wrote this year were the first educated under OBE — as ”a necessary break with apartheid education”. The union said it made education more relevant to the needs of society.

”The union opposes any attempt to destabilise the education system by scrapping the current national curriculum,” Ntola warned.

Although the improved maths and maths literacy results were encouraging, there were still uneven results across the provinces, with pupils in large rural provinces still at a disadvantage. This was primarily because of problems with resources, which led to over-large classes and a lack of permanent appointments.

Also in need of attention was the development and support of teachers, the promotion of home language instruction in previously disadvantaged schools and improving the quality of education.

”To this end, Sadtu is joining with other stakeholders to form local education committees.

”We are also participating in the quality learning and teaching campaign with the understanding that teachers must be on time, in class, on task and well-prepared,” said the union, which represents 235 000 teachers.

”By the same token, the Department of Education needs to provide basic infrastructure and learning materials and training and local support to teachers,” it said. — Sapa