Graphic: John McCann
The 88% national pass rate recorded for last year’s matric students is nothing to be sniffed at.
It is particularly encouraging that more than 656 000 learners passed the National Senior Certificate examinations, out of more than 900 000 who wrote the high school ending exams, given the history of thousands of children dropping by the wayside and not staying in the schooling system all the way to grade 12.
Well done, Class of 2025.
But the celebration must be tempered by the worrying fact that, according to education experts, the number of learners taking pure math as a subject has been steadily declining, with just a third of learners taking the subject last year.
Worse still, the matric pass rate for pure maths dropped from 69% to 64%.
It’s no surprise that the latest Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study showed South African grade 5 students came in last out of 59 countries tested in maths and science in 2023.
In a world where economies are increasingly driven by the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields, it makes no sense that South Africa is not going full out to ensure that we increase the number of university graduates in those disciplines.
And that starts from embedding numeracy foundations in early childhood development programmes so that our children enter school ready to learn maths.
We should be doing more to encourage our children towards those subjects, and nip the worrying trend of most schools merely settling to teach the less challenging maths literacy in order to boost pass rates.
The fact that the national team placed 38th out of more than 100 countries at last year’s International Mathematics Olympiad shows that there is no shortage of maths talent among our children.
But the talent is mostly shining through in private schools with the finances to plough resources — including properly trained teachers — into the subject.
How many more Mamokgethi Phakengs would South Africa produce if the resources were also available to village schools across the country?
The department of basic education’s 10-year National Mathematics Improvement Plan, aimed at raising both participation and performance in maths across all grades, is a good starting point.
But South Africa has a clichéd reputation for putting brilliant plans to paper but failing miserably at implementation.
It remains to be seen whether Minister Siviwe Gwarube and her team can prove the naysayers wrong in this instance.