Poorer areas outclass PE district
Gloom as region’s pass rate falls more than 10 percentage points in two years
DESPITE the Eastern Cape managing to improve marginally on its overall matric pass rate, the Port Elizabeth district has once again taken a tumble, dropping by more than 10 percentage points in just two years.
While the district claimed pole position in 2013 with 74%, improving slightly to 74.3% the following year, it plunged in 2015 to 66% and dropped a further 2.5 percentage points to 63.5% last year, a decrease of 10.8 percentage points in two years.
The district ranked ninth provincially, resulting in it being outclassed by predominantly poorer districts such as Qumbu and Mthatha.
Yesterday, Eastern Cape Education Department deputy director-general Ray Tywakadi blamed peri-urban and township schools as the major contributing factor to the alarming statistic.
Tywakadi said last year’s northern areas teacher shortage protest coupled with the department’s failure to address issues swiftly had also played a contributing role.
“Last year, there was substantive instability which affected the northern areas and we cannot run away from that,” he said.
“As a department, we take the blame that there were issues placed on our doorstep that we were supposed to [address but didn’t].”
Tywakadi was addressing the media in East London prior to announcing the province’s top achievers.
Of the 82 756 matrics from 926 schools in the province that wrote their final exams, 49 042 passed.
The Cradock district took top honours with an 81.2% pass – a 9.5 percentage point increase from 2015 – closely followed by the Uitenhage district with 76.3%, up 7.3 percentage points.
A total of 44 schools in the province managed to obtain a 100% pass rate, with 15 of them in the Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage districts.
Three schools in the Port Elizabeth district failed to obtain a minimum 20% pass rate and were included in the “worst 50 performing schools” category.
Two schools in the province – Middle Zolo Senior Secondary in Cofimvaba and Msobomvu High in East London – obtained a 0% pass rate.
At the media briefing, Education MEC Mandla Makupula applauded the class of 2016, saying that “despite taking a dip provincially in 2015, the province’s results are again on their upward trajectory following this year’s 2.5 percentage point increase [from 56.8% to 59.3%].
Questioned about the dramatic drop in the Port Elizabeth district’s results, Tywakadi said: “The biggest change in PE happened in 2014 – in the category of 40-50% pass rate schools, it dropped from 13 to seven schools, and in the region of schools with a 60-70% pass rate, the number dropped from 11 in 2014 to three in 2016.
“This is where the shift in PE [statistics] occurred as these schools [in the two categories] are in the northern areas and townships and our focus is to go back this year and look at the problems and assist.
“Generally, the ex-Model C schools in the [PE] district in the 70-100% range are doing very well.”
NMMU education expert Dr Servani Pillay said the dip in the pass rate for Port Elizabeth could be ascribed to poor leadership by the provincial and district education authorities.
She said problems besetting the city’s schools ranged from structural issues like inadequate toilet facilities and not enough desks and other education resources, to non-structural issues like poor teaching, insufficient teachers, overflowing classes and poverty.
“These are the challenges in PE – but what are our institutional authorities doing to address them?
“The answer is they have not done anything,” Pillay said.
An example of this lack of engagement was that even after the angry parent protests and closing of school gates in the northern areas early last year, the provincial Education Department had still not introduced meaningful changes, she said.
“There is a reticence from the authorities that prevents them from listening to parents and unions, and recognising and then addressing the problems in a deep-seated way.”
Matric results were a good barometer of how a school was functioning from Grade 1 to matric and it was clear that many of Port Elizabeth’s formerly disadvantaged schools “on the other side of the highway” desperately needed guidance, Pillay said.
Retired NMMU education professor and now independent consultant Professor Susan van Rensburg said one of the possible reasons for the decline was the troubled northern areas.
“It needs deeper analysis, but it is possible the gangsterism that has disrupted the northern areas brought down the results of schools there, and therefore the average of the whole PE district.”
Another possible reason could be in the district’s overall managerial system, she said. It could also be related to the serious problem of drugs in the city’s urban environment versus the “small town” environment of Uitenhage.