Linda Chisholm:A SECOND LOOK
If the matric exam did not exist, South Africans would have to invent it. As one of our major social institutions, the matric exam results each year signal whether we are succeeding or failing as a nation. This year’s results were no different.
Whether they are a major or a minor improvement is irrelevant. Every year we go through the same ritual: the build-up to the exam, the publication of results, ensuing media hype and learned analyses of the reasons for success and failure.
Ten years ago, the late Ken Hartshorne lay the blame for disastrously poor results of black schools at the door of National Party policy. Last year, Jonathan Jansen of the University of Durban-Westville argued that “matric results merely mirror the unmitigated failure of education policies since 1994”.
Arguably, the most significant education policy since 1994 has been outcomes-based education (OBE).
In OBE philosophy, assessment has a direct effect on teaching and learning. If this is so, then what does it say about the matric exam? How does the exam affect teaching and learning in South Africa? And are this year’s results linked to OBE?
In OBE-jargon, “outcomes-based” assessment should replace “traditional” forms of assessment. The curious thing is that the matric exam is a classic form of “traditional” assessment.
As such it does not fit within the OBE philosophy. OBE-speak typically describes “traditional” assessment as “input-based”, “norm-referenced” and “summative”. An OBE framework prefers assessment to be “outcomes-based”, “criterion-referenced” and “formative”.
In plain English, matric generates bad forms of teaching and learning: memorisation and regurgitation of facts. It does not promote the problem-solving skills Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel and Director General of Finance Maria Ramos tell us we need.
This “backwash effect” of the exam is generally considered to be negative: teachers “teach to the test” and students learn not for understanding, but to give the correct answer in the exam.
And if the purpose is to improve schools and learning, then the test, examination or assessment must be able to provide diagnostic and formative information: “norm- referenced” and “summative” exams do not do this.
The reason the exam persists despite being contrary to broader educational goals, let alone OBE philosophy, is not because it provides objective information about student performance. Adviser to the national Department of Education Luis Crouc has described the exam as “a prescription for how not to carry out testing”. And efforts to compare results between schools and provinces are “extremely treacherous”.
Both the educational and statistical credibility of the exam are seemingly close to zero. Economically, too, it seems an unjustifiable expense. Provincial education departments reportedly spend a great deal more on the administration of the matric exam than on textbooks.
The reason it persists is because it fulfils essential functions for the society: it acts as a filtering and selection mechanism, controlling access to high-status jobs in the economy and government; it controls curriculum and teaching; it validates what schools and teachers do; and it signals how well or badly the education system and the nation at large are doing.
South Africa is not the only country with secondary school exams which fulfil these roles.
Comparative research shows almost all countries conduct secondary school examinations, and there is indeed convergence in key respects.
Nonetheless, there are variations: Sweden and the United States, for example, have “low stakes” exams, but countries like France, Germany, China, Japan and a number of developing countries have “high stakes” exams. Like our own matric exam, secondary school examinations are “home-grown”.
A 1993 Unesco study of 10 countries concludes that selection continues to be the major purpose of secondary school exams. They are particularly prominent in low-income national economies which try to control access to limited jobs. And the more “high stakes” the exam, the less likely the possibility for innovative and progressive curricula.
The evidence is clear. The matric exam is a “high stakes” examination with a powerful negative “backwash” effect on curriculum. It has a strong selection effect. And it has little statistical or educational validity.
One wonders why it has not yet been abolished. It does exactly the opposite of what our new educational goals claim to strive towards.
Abolition will of course face strong political opposition. Even a minor reform to make the exam less “high stakes” will provide a powerful challenge to its selection effect.
The answer is clearly not more exams, and more filters. It is much more complicated than this. But surely this is the crux of the debate, rather than whether results have improved or dropped by a few percentage points or not.
Linda Chisholm is director of the education policy unit at the University of the Witwatersrand.