Elation as East Cape pass rate goes up
Despite improvement, province remains bottom of the class
THE Eastern Cape achieved an almost 10% improvement in its matric pass rate, but was still bottom of the class in 2017. The pass rate of 65% – a jump of 5.7 percentage points on the 59.3% in 2016 – was the second-largest improvement in the country.
Announcing the results at SABC headquarters in a live broadcast from Auckland Park last night‚ Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said that, overall, the country’s matric class of 2017 had achieved a pass rate of 75.1%‚ a 2.6 percentage point increase from 72.5% in the previous year.
This is still down from a peak of 78.2% of pupils who passed in 2013.
The 75.1% figure reflects the achievement of the 401 435 matriculants who passed their National Senior Certificate exams.
Just over 28% of pupils achieved a university pass.
Eastern Cape education authorities and experts said that while the sharp improvement in the provincial pass rate was to be applauded, a lot of work would still be needed before the province could cross the 70% threshold.
DA member of the provincial legislature Jane Cowley said the achievement was a clear sign that the three-year improvement plan implemented by the department following a dip in the 2015 matric results was bearing fruit.
“The results indicate that the [outcomes of the] plan can be achieved, provided the department implements the plan effectively,” Cowley said.
“The results would have been even better if [it] corrected issues within [its own ranks].
“I’m optimistic that the department is moving in the right direction, but it must clean house.”
She highlighted internal issues such as a lack of adequate competence testing for principals and teaching staff.
She also said the department had to do more to assist schools in rural communities.
Northern Areas Education Forum secretary Richard Draai said this should also extend to adequate provision of teaching staff across the province – an issue not addressed in Motshekga’s speech.
“At Bethvale Primary, we [may] have to pay [salaries for] up to seven people this year with money we don’t have,” he said.
“The department’s model for post-provisioning norms is problematic, and these are the issues that are hurting us.”
Education expert Professor Susan van Rensburg emphasised the need for intervention at a young age, with approaches tailored for the specific pupils.
“The department has a special programme to help progressed pupils [those who failed Grade 11 but continued to Grade 12], but it needs to identify different types of people and support them in different ways of teaching,” she said.
“It is important to introduce this plan as early as possible, but if it takes a top-down approach, it should at least implement it from Grade 10, rather than after [the pupils have failed].”
Van Rensburg said Motshekga’s speech was too vague in that it did not elaborate on the intervention plan’s successes.
“I’d like to analyse in which subjects the 5.7 percentage points were gained, because it [needs to be] in subjects that can create a future for the pupils, otherwise we’re just giving them a sugar tablet and saying they have a piece of paper.”
Motshekga noted that girls had achieved far more distinctions than boys – 62.6% of the A passes had been attained by girls, she said. This included distinctions in critical subjects such as accounting‚ business studies‚ economics‚ mathematics‚ and physical science.
“Clearly‚ our gender-based intervention programmes have uplifted the performance levels of the girl child,” she said.
“While this is plausible‚ we must make a concerted effort to provide similar interventions for the boy child.
“Even the regional and international assessment studies implore us to do so.” She said there were more bachelor passes at no-fee schools (76 300) than fee-paying schools (67 867) in 2017.
“This is poignant‚ as it points to a remarkable shift in the balance of forces.
“From 2015 to date‚ greater equity was observed despite the reality that inequalities still remain in the system.”
Nine schools out of 6 814 had zero matric pupils who passed and most were quintile 1 and 2 schools‚ the poorest schools that do not pay fees.
This is an improvement from 18 that achieved no passes in 2016.
There were 497 schools that achieved a 100% pass rate‚ 7.3% of all schools – down from 8% in 2016.
The top-achieving province is the Free State‚ recording a pass mark of 86% – down from 88.2% in 2016, when it was also the top-performing province.
In second place is Gauteng‚ which achieved 85.1% – the same pass rate that it had in 2016 – while the Western Cape is third with 82.7%‚ down from 85.9% in 2016 and dropping from second place last year.
The second-poorest performing province was Limpopo, achieving 65.6%‚ up by 3.1 percentage points from 2016.
Four provinces achieved above 70%‚ and these are Kwa-Zulu-Natal (72.8%) – improving by 6.4 percentage points from 2016, the largest improvement in the country, Mpumalanga (74.8%) – a decline of 2.3 percentage points, Northern Cape (75.6%) – a decline of 3.1 percentage points, and North West (79.4%) – a decline of 3.1 percentage points.