The Eastern Cape sprung a surprise on the country by being the only province to record an improvement in its 2005 matric results. The province’s performance rose from 53,5% to 56,7%. The results in other provinces, however, showed a decrease, dragging the national figures down from a 70,7% pass rate in 2004 to 68,3% last year.
The question is: How did such an impoverished province, which usually lurches from crisis to crisis, manage to beat better resourced provinces?
Representatives from teachers’ unions in the Eastern Cape attribute the good performance to selflessness on the part of teachers, learners and parents. They said the achievement came about despite lack of support from the provincial department of education.
Provincial spokesperson for the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) Mxolisi Dimaza said: ‘Without the commitment and hard work of our teachers, learners, school management and parents, we could not have achieved this feat.”
Dimaza said despite its difficulties with the provincial education department, Sadtu had appealed to its members to make ‘big sacrifices” in the interest of the learners. ‘We ensured that we held extra classes in the afternoons, weekends and holidays so that our Grade 12 learners did not lose out. We also encouraged teachers to work in clusters and help one another,” said Dimaza.
Dimaza pulls no punches when he talks about the provincial education department, which he describes as ‘arrogant” and ‘inefficient. Already this year 80% of schools have not received learning support materials,” he said.
Dimaza believes the province’s matric results could have been higher than 3%, had the department not terminated the services of temporary teachers. This, he said, created serious teacher shortages and almost crippled delivery of education in some regions.
But despite this unfavourable situation, educators soldiered on and, in areas such as Kokstad, school governing bodies came on board and contributed money towards hiring temporary teachers.
‘In Port Elizabeth, teachers worked for free as we vowed we will not abandon our learners, no matter what. We believe it is the department we have problems with, not the learners,” he said.
Mfuneko Dangazela, vice-president of the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa), said the Eastern Cape’s performance ‘came as complete shock”. ‘On the ground most people were expecting a below par performance.”
Dangazela feels strongly that the problems dogging the Eastern Cape are not educational, but political.
He praised teachers across the spectrum for their commitment. ‘The increase in matric results is genuine and reflective of educators’ and learners’ commitment, irrespective of the lack of support from political heads of education,” said Dangazela. ‘It shows that we have potential, though this is robbed by political bureaucracy.”
Dangazela also praised Umalusi for its stringent monitoring of the whole examination process. He said this has never happened in the history of the organisation as politicians previously manipulated the results to suit their agenda.
He said if Umalusi had not been firm, the results would not have dropped in the other provinces.
Minister of Education Naledi Pandor said she is not happy with the results because they fell below her projected 70%. ‘Some of the outcomes are positive, but there are also a number of worrying features that the department and our provincial colleagues have to address. The positive features indicate the possibility of significant progress in the future, and the negatives suggest regression if we do not act decisively,” said Pandor.