/ 26 January 2018

Commitment required from all concerned

Statistics show that more than one million learners entered grade one in 2006

Basic Education, or at least a large portion of it, is a right enshrined in the Constitution for every South African child. However, when examining the contrast between the outcomes of public school education systems and those of private schools, it’s clear that quality education is a privilege that automatically excludes the poor, no matter how gifted they may be.

While schools that wrote under the Independent Examination Board (IEB) achieved an average pass rate of over 90%, in the public sector the pass rate was just over 75% last year.

This 75.1% matric pass rate both reveals and conceals much of what can go wrong in the education of a nation. Firstly, the recent Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls) rated South Africa last out of 50 countries in terms of reading and comprehension skills of grade four learners.

In addition, statistics show that more than one million learners entered grade one in 2006, but 12 years later, only over 534 000 sat for their exams. We cannot say with certainty what the reasons are for the high dropout rate during school years, but the unemployment rate is disheartening enough for many. Nearly 40% of South Africa’s youth do not have jobs according to the expanded definition, which includes those who have given up actively looking for work.

Many of those who do pass matric may not obtain good enough marks to proceed to university and even if they do complete tertiary studies, they step into a job market that is not able to create enough work for at everyone who wants a job, while most do not possess the technical skills necessary to create employment for themselves.

What also adds insult to injury is the fact that despite the competitive globalised economy we operate in, the bar is set very low for learners in South Africa: the expectation is to get 40% in three subjects and 30% in three others to pass matric. These are clear indications that many have fallen through the cracks from day one of their schooling career.

This is a sad reality, one that needs all concerned to come up with the formula to overcome these failures; so far the government has been missing the mark. Considering that South Africa allocated over 17% of its national budget — which translates to over R240-billion of the national fiscus — towards basic education in the current financial year, one would expect much better outcomes.

Provinces go on to spend an even larger portion of their budget allocations on basic education. For example, the Eastern Cape spends 40% to 45% of its budget on education, but has consistently come out as one of the worst performing provinces in the country, occasionally alternating with Limpopo for this dubious distinction.

Though the 75.1% matric pass rate is hailed as an improvement and even a good achievement, the reality is that it is mediocre in a myriad of ways. The improvement is marginal from the previous year, which had a matric pass rate of 72.5% for 2016 and 70.7% for 2015. The latest matric pass rate is still below the level of 78% achieved in 2013. It is disheartening to see that it has failed to climb an upward trajectory from that level.

There are some low hanging fruit that the stakeholders in education can go for, but these require teachers, students, parents, district directors, labour unions and communities to be on board. What has been clear from the results of the Eastern Cape is that commitment and discipline can produce results. In schools like St John’s in Mthatha and St James in Cofimvaba, what they lack in resources they make up for in dedication.

Our learners and parents must get past the idea of giving away too much of our power to the government, which allows them to blame said government for failures while not hesitating to take personal credit for successes.

The value of hard work can be demonstrated by the fact that the top achieving learners such as Reamohetse Mofitiso, the top learner in the Eastern Cape, comes from Lehana Senior Secondary School, a so-called Quintile One school. Quintile One schools are in the least developed areas in terms of the Human Development Index.

There were many schools in the Eastern Cape that achieved an over 80% pass rate, but that means there were also many schools that achieved in the region of 40% pass rate and below, pulling the average down to an unimpressive 65%.

Mofitiso is clearly gifted, but he advocates hard work and discipline to achieve success, and so do his peers who were right up there with him as top achievers for matric 2017.