The reported fall in the number of high school pupils moving through the system to grade 12 or matric is the fault of education minister Kader Asmal, the Democratic Alliance said on Sunday.
The Sunday Times reported that only four out of every 10 children who started school in South Africa made it to matric. DA spokesperson Willem Doman said Asmal’s insistence on a better matric pass rate had encouraged schools to hold pupils back in grades 10 and 11, allowing only the brightest to go on the grade 12 and write the matric exam.
Thus they made many pupils ”disappear” in order to make their pass rates look better.
The improvement in the matric pass rate over the last year or two has been false, said Doman, as fewer pupils were writing matric every year. It was no use looking at pupils in matric without considering those in the system as a whole.
Education authorities have been making much every year of the improvement in the pass rate — from 48,9% in 1999 to 68,9% last year. However, the Sunday Times reported the number of pupils who wrote the exam fell from 552 862 in 1998 to 443 821 last year — a fall of nearly 19%.
Doman said the education system was characterised by two flaws: the minister’s obsession with outcomes instead of a correct process, and an apartheid-era curriculum that was still geared to producing academics instead of preparing pupils for the work place.
Inadequate staffing of schools and a lack of discipline among pupils were contributing factors which Asmal had failed to address, he said.
However, said Doman, even in developed countries only a minority of pupils were prepared for higher education. In Germany, 80% of pupils were prepared for the workplace, with only 20% going on to higher education.
Doman said Asmal should bring forward the introduction of his Further Education and Training System (FET), currently scheduled to be implemented in 2006. This would provide for those pupils who did not go on to grade 12.
If South Africa did not address the needs of her economy and enable young people to find employment within it, it would be failing its youth once again, he said. – Sapa