A panel tasked with probing the 2008 National Senior Certificate (NSC) results has found that learners who scored 50% and more for core mathematics would have achieved 40% or more in higher grade maths in the old matric system.
Education minister Naledi Pandor appointed the commission to determine the levels of complexity of the 2008 examination’s core mathematics question papers.
The panel of experts, drawn from the education sector and with extensive experience in the sector, was also tasked with comparing the papers to question papers set for Senior Certificate examinations in the past.
This came after various groups raised concerns that the standard of the NSC core mathematics question papers had been diluted due to the abolishment of the old system of higher and standard grade.
A group called the Concerned Mathematics Educators (CME) released a press statement in January this year claiming that the November examination papers were “watered down” and that the “standard of the mathematics exam for 2008 had dropped to an unacceptable level”. The CME also suggested that learners who achieved more than 50% on the mathematics papers were not necessarily prepared to cope with “mathematics related courses such as Engineering, Architecture, and Business Science at tertiary institutions.”
Critics also suggested that since the numbers of learners (63 035) passing mathematics with more than 50% was a significant increase from the approximately 28 000 learners who had passed higher grade mathematics at the 40% level in 2006 (28 156) and 2007 (28 263) it should be asked whether the 2008 results at this level were comparable to higher grade passes in previous years.
The panel found that because the question papers did not provide enough questions (25%) at the “knowledge” level of the taxonomy (as per the department of education’s subject advisory guide), that there were possibly too many learners who failed mathematics unnecessarily.
The report further states that while the criticism that not all learners who achieve more than 50% on the core mathematics papers were prepared to cope with mathematics related courses is plausible, “it is wrong to assume that by comparison all learners who scored more than 50% on the higher grade papers were adequately prepared to cope with such courses”.