Return of Bantu education

I find the 20% maths pass mark proposal very worrying. Yes, there are children who struggle with maths, but we should be looking for ways to support them and aim higher to inspire excellence rather than lowering the bar so that everybody can step over. This may have the effect of making children aim even lower; 20% is definitely below failure by any definition and grade 7 is way too early to make children aim that low.

I see this policy as Bantu education under a different name. A child who is promoted at 20% will by default be excluded from mathematics in grade 10. This means most of these children will be excluded from major courses, including most commerce and business courses at tertiary level. They will not fit in the few remaining good courses that don’t require mathematics. Though they may study further, they will most likely become unemployable.

Many of these children, as well as a number of parents, don’t understand the career implications of that decision. As somebody who runs a maths and science tuition company, at the beginning of every year I see parents of children who wrote maths literacy for matric lamenting that decision and asking for help so that their children can repeat the year and write core maths.

The majority of the children who will be promoted at 20% will come from disadvantaged schools that can’t afford good maths teachers, mainly black rural schools, and hence are the ones who will be unemployable in future. This is indeed reminiscent of Bantu education, but this time it is being provided by a black government.

Stephen Twinoburyo Scimatics Solutions (Pretoria and Johannesburg)