Teachers blamed for appalling maths results
Shock as more than 88% of grade 9 pupils who wrote national assessment tests score 29% or less
THE poor quality of maths teaching has again come under the spotlight in the wake of this week’s announcement of the dismal results of the annual national assessment tests.
A shocking 884 000 (88.4%) of the million Grade 9 pupils who wrote the tests in September failed, with scores of 29% or less.
The Grade 9 average mark for maths was 14% and only 4 000 (0.4%) of the million bagged a distinction.
Those who achieved distinctions in maths included 69 pupils from Afrikaans Girls’ High, Pretoria.
It has emerged as the topperforming school in Gauteng.
Other Gauteng schools that shone included Northcliff High, Pretoria High School for Girls,
A lot of teachers were deprived of maths tuition when they were at school
Afrikaans Boys’ High, and Gatang Senior Secondary School, Pretoria.
Maths experts have blamed the appalling results on incompetent teachers.
Professor Delia North, academic leader of statistics at the University of KwaZuluNatal, said: “Because of apartheid, a lot of teachers were deprived of having maths [tuition] when they were at school.
“For a whole generation, little children in African schools didn’t get maths because it was taken out of the school syllabus.
“Those children are the teachers of today.
“We see really smart children at schools at which the teachers are not good.” She said the test results indicated that many pupils would not be able to handle maths when they moved on to Grade 10 next year.
Pupils have a choice of either maths or maths literacy in grades 10 to 12.
“The problem is, once you choose maths literacy you close the door to [university] study of engineering, science and commerce.”
Professor Jacky Galpin, of Wits’s department of statistics and actuarial science, attributed part of the dismal performance to pupils not being taught maths tables.
Galpin, who was horrified by the Grade 9 maths results, said: “They simply get rewarded for regurgitating what the teacher has told them.”
She said most of these pupils would not have a future because they would not be able to study engineering, science or commerce.
Alwyn Olivier, president of the Association for Mathematics Education, also believes that teacher incompetence is the cause of the poor results.
“The school structures, and school discipline and learning culture, are just not there.”
He said the professional development of teachers needed to be supported.
The Greater Sekhukhune education district in Limpopo— one of South Africa’s 81 education districts — was the worstperforming district.
Pupils’ average mark in maths in this district was 7.8%.
Other poorly performing districts were Mopani and Capricorn, in Limpopo, GraaffReinet and Cradock, in Eastern Cape, and Pixley ka Seme, in Northern Cape.
Pupils in other grades did not fare any better at maths.
The Grade 4 average mark was 37% and in Grade 5 it was 33%.
Almost 7 million pupils from 24 000 schools in grades 1 to 6, and in Grade 9, wrote the annual national assessment tests.
The performance in maths of Grade 1s dropped from an average of 68% last year to 60%. The Grade 3s picked up marginally from 41% last year to 53%, and the Grade 2s went from 57% to 59%. Pupils in Grade 6 improved from 27% to 39%.
There was no change in the Grade 4 maths results, 37%, and the Grade 5 average mark went up slightly from 30% to 33%.
Pretoria High School for Girls’ principal Penny McNair said she was proud of her Grade 9 pupils’ performance in maths and English.
A total of 293 of her pupils scored 40% or more in English,
The school structures, and discipline and learning culture, are just not there
including 81 who got distinctions.
One of her pupils, Janie Mouton, scored full marks in maths and another, Vrishti Singh, achieved 96% for maths and 95% for English.
A total of 27 Grade 9 pupils of her school achieved between 80% and 100% for maths.
McNair praised her team of committed teachers.
She described them as “really going beyond the call of duty” to assist pupils.“We have a wellestablished culture of learning and teaching within the school. The girls are very disciplined and there’s discipline in the classrooms.”
The school runs remedial and support programmes.