Move to ensure more pupils make the grade

THE Department of Basic Education has asked schools to hand out extra marks to deserving pupils in grades 7, 8 and 9 in what many believe is an attempt to prevent tens of thousands from failing because of tougher new pass requirements.

It has also capped the total number of pupils in these grades that schools may fail this year.

The department’s acting director-general, Paddy Padayachee, signed a circular on Friday informing schools that the guidelines were being issued to ensure that “no learner in the senior phase is disadvantaged” during the first year of the new curriculum.

At least 2.7 million pupils were enrolled in grades 7, 8 and 9 this year.

This comes in the wake of mounting pressure by the National Professional Teachers Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa) over the stringent pass requirements, particularly for Grade 9.

Last year a Grade 9 pupil who achieved between 30% and 39% could still pass maths although the pass requirement was 40%.

This was because of a special provision that allowed for a pupil to be condoned in one subject, a stipulation that has fallen away this year.

Dale McGregor, deputy principal of Alexander Road High School in Port Elizabeth, said a survey of 11 top schools (five from Port Elizabeth and six from Joburg) showed that 553 Grade 9 pupils failed maths in the June exams.

“These are schools with wellqualified maths teachers. The five PE schools reported a com- bined total of 187 Grade 9 children who failed maths,” said McGregor.

He estimated that at least 50 000 Grade 9 pupils countrywide would fail maths at the end of the year.

“Each of these children may not be mathematically talented but are talented in other areas. These are children who are not weak academically or intellectually, they are just not talented in maths.”

In addition, the pass mark for

Certain districts had instructed teachers ‘to make the papers easier’

home language in Grade 9 was increased from 40% to 50% this year.

The new circular states that schools must “adjust” their results if the overall pass percentage in a grade for this year is more than 5% lower than the average pass percentage for the past three years.

This means that if the overall pass percentage for a grade was 50% at the end of this year and the average pass percentage was 60% in the past three years, this year’s pass percentage must be increased to 55%.

Schools were told to first award marks to “borderline” pupils, whose marks were closest to the pass requirement, before awarding marks to others.

“Starting with borderline learners needing the fewest marks to pass, learners’ marks are adjusted until the target pass percentage of the school for 2014 in the grade is achieved,” the circular stated.

Principals were told that if the pass percentage in a grade was still not achieved after the awarding of extra marks to pupils in two subjects, pupils could be awarded marks in an additional subject or subjects.

“A maximum adjustment of 10% per subject will be allowed per learner. This implies that if a subject has a maximum total of 100 marks, no learner should have his or her marks adjusted by more than 10 marks.”

Anthea Cereseto, deputy president of Naptosa, said the latest guidelines were a “BandAid” remedy — and that they were necessary.

“It’s saving the country from having an excessive failure rate in grades 7 to 9 because of the raised pass requirements.”

Cereseto, the headmistress of Parktown Girls, said: “I don’t think the public will like it because they will say it’s passing everybody.

“But you can’t keep threequarters of a cohort of children behind. The country can’t really afford to educate that number of people for an extra year because they haven’t met the requirements.”

She said that even after the adjustments some pupils were going to struggle.

Cereseto said some Naptosa members had indicated that certain education districts had instructed teachers “to make the papers easier”.

“The other instruction given was that during the moderation of papers, moderators should adjust everybody’s mark upwards in cases in which pupils fail.”