Quality of matric passes hamper job prospects
ALTHOUGH the 2011 matric pass rate is higher than in previous years, the quality of the passes will prevent many of these matriculants from entering the labour market.
This is despite the market’s demand for technical, financial, economic and artisan skills.
Labour economists, education advocacy groups and education unions yesterday said the future of 348 117 pupils who passed their matric exams looks bleak, given the slow growth in the economy. Economic growth, at slightly more than 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), falls short of the 7 percent needed to tackle job creation.
According to the Department of Education, the class of 2011 achieved a 70.2 percent pass rate which was an improvement from the 67.5 percent in 2010 and the 60.6 percent pass rate in 2009.
The department’s technical report states that only 24.3 percent of the 348 117 who passed, qualified for university acceptance and of the 220 000 pupils who wrote mathematics, only 46.3 percent passed.
According to Chris Klopper, the chief executive of the SA Teachers’ Union, the challenge for these matriculants would be to enter the labour market or study further.
“Unfortunately, it will be extremely difficult for inexperi- enced new entrants in the labour market to find suitable employment, which emphasises the dire need for a fresh approach to the creation of employment and the restructuring of the labour market,” he said.
Mike Schussler, an economist at economist.co.za, said poor education standards in the past had limited entry into the labour market. He said businesses had to teach new employees basic skills such as reading, writing and numeracy.
A young person with a matric certificate has a 40 percent chance of getting employment.
According to the New Growth Path, the government aims to create 5 million jobs over a 10-year period, especially in the areas of agriculture, the green economy, mining, manufacturing and tourism.
On the other hand, according to Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s 2011 budget speech, 42 percent of young people between the ages of 18 and 29 are unemployed, while people aged between 14 and 35 account for about 40 percent of South Africa’s 48.7 million population.
Loane Sharp, a labour market analyst at Adcorp, said there were 830 000 unfilled positions, half of which included managerial positions and other half were in the law, engineering, finance and accounting sectors, and yet there were 600 000 unemployable graduates sitting at home.
“Most of the graduates cannot be employed because they have irrelevant qualifications such as arts, humanities and social sciences,” Sharp said.
He said a young person with a matric certificate had a 40 percent chance of getting employment, while a young person with an honours degree had a 78 percent chance of finding a job.
Efficient Group chief economist Dawie Roodt said the government should look into investing in what the private sector offered in professional jobs, especially in the finance sector, instead of investing in agriculture, green energy and manufacturing.
He also said labour legislation was far too strict and made it impossible for the private sector to absorb new entrants.
Analysts at research firm Econometrix said it was unlikely that the government’s ambitious official employment targets would be met in the foreseeable future, although there were encouraging elements in the latest results.
“In the shorter term, there is little chance of the government meeting its medium-term employment targets based on the educational outcomes currently being achieved,” the analysts said in a bulletin.
Doron Isaacs, a co-ordinator at Equal Education, said that in the past the labour market depended on exploitation through manual labour, however, that had changed over the years.
“We are concerned about the poor performance in mathematics and the sciences because the employment industry was now skills and knowledge based,” he said.
Sharp blamed the universities’ entry requirements, saying they were inflexible.
“Universities are making entry criteria harder for pupils coming out schools. A matriculant who wants to study law, economics and accounting does not need mathematics and science to gain access to university. I find that these institutions are becoming increasingly out of touch with what the business sector is offering when it comes to job prospects.”