Issues South Africa’s Education Must Face

by Admin · May 2, 2022

St Matthews in Soweto – CIE

Catholic schools again outperformed the national average in the NSC matric 2021, but some areas of concern in education generally remain, and some misunderstandings need clearing up, writes Anne Baker of the Catholic Institute of Education.

The Catholic schools’ Class of 2021 writing their National Senior Certificate (NSC) state matric examinations achieved an outstanding 85,9% pass rate. A total of 8502 candidates wrote the NSC in 2021, with 6955 offering the state exam and 1547 the IEB. Some independent Catholic schools also write the state exam and the pass rate for Catholic schools was 82,6%, while the IEB pass rate was 98,8%. It must be remembered that the majority, but not all, of schools offering the IEB examination are well-resourced.

The quality of the pass is important, and 4754 Catholic school matriculants can study at university with an additional 1682 learners able to attend universities of technology.

There has been a decrease in pass rate of 1% compared to 2020. However, more learners wrote this year; the Class of 2021 can be compared to the Class of 2015 when Catholic schools last had over 8500 learners writing the state examination. The period 2016-19, just prior to the pandemic, was marked with decreasing learner numbers, so more learners writing the examination is a welcome development. We must congratulate the learners, parents, educators and schools who have worked tremendously hard, especially given that learners have received their education under lockdown conditions for the past two years.

As is the case in many countries, there is a strong relationship in South Africa between the performance of learners in their school-leaving examinations and the state of the country itself. Since the results tend to be an indicator of how the government delivers services — and education is the biggest public service — the results become politicised.

South Africa may be unique in certain aspects. For example, we are one of a few countries where ministers and quality assurers hold press conferences. You wouldn’t find the secretary for education in the US or the British minister of education addressing the nation on the results, especially not at the beginning of the school year when they should be solely focused on ensuring that the new year starts off well for learners. Even our neighbouring countries do not release results the way we do. We may need to sort out our priorities when our minister of basic education is holding a celebration breakfast for former learners while more than 25000 learners have not yet been placed in a school.

The annual results pattern

There is a standard pattern in the announcement of matric results. First there is the build-up to the results, then the excitement of the pass rate announcement, followed by the celebration of top performers. Then comes the results hangover, when the “real pass rate” is analysed to include those learners who have dropped out, and various opinion articles lament the failure of the education system. Many political calls are made and civil society demands are advanced based on interpretations of how the system is performing. This year those calls included: pushing for a higher pass rates in some subjects, removing rotational learning, and calls for ending lockdown restrictions for learners.

This year we will focus on two key questions: how we measure success and celebrate the tremendous achievement of learners against learning in the time of plague. The second point is to look at the rate of dropout and what drives this phenomenon — and if it is really correct to speak about the “real pass rate”.

Due to the highly politicised nature of the results, there is an unhealthy and damaging aspect to analysis of them. We speak about pass rates and that then implies failure rates. The term “failure” is naturally loaded as it conjures images of learners having spent 12 years and not learning much or leaving school without the ability to contribute and take a role in society. The South African Depression and Anxiety Group works exceptionally hard when matric results are released, giving support to learners and families to avoid suicides which increase but don’t receive much media attention. The consequences of attributing failure are very clear and potentially fatal.

There is no ‘fail’

When you look at how results are captured, what is clear is that the NSC is a qualification. One either achieves the qualification or one doesn’t. Unlike other qualifications, this certificate is time-bound in that you must do it at the end of the school year, and only under limited circumstances can you have a second chance.

Essentially, you cannot fail — the state results capture learners under the heading “not achieved” while the IEB captures these learners under the heading “did not qualify”. In both cases, these include learners who might have started writing the examination but could not complete due to ill health, or learners who achieved pass rates in all subjects except the key subjects. You will not find the word “failed”, because that would not be a correct reflection of the overall achievement of the learner.

As an analogy, if someone is studying towards a PhD, you will not say, “Oh there’s John, he failed his doctorate.” You are more likely to stay, “There’s John, he is studying towards his doctorate.” The same level of value needs to be placed on the NSC qualification so that we recognise that someone who has not achieved it is still in the process of achieving the certificate — and as lifelong learners, humans have the capacity to learn throughout their lives. You don’t stop learning just because you achieved the NSC. The results should never be a reason to end a life or to subject people to exclusion.

The second point is the more contentious one of dropout. It is a given that not all learners who start Grade 10 end up writing Grade 12. Some 146000 learners who were in Grade 10 did not write the examination in Grade 12 last year. It is encouraging, as noted by Equal Education, that 2021 was the first time since 1994 that over 50% of learners who started Grade 1 completed the NSC.

Some points worth noting: there are three times as many primary schools as there are secondary schools, and it is a given that dropout occurs between primary and secondary phases, and then dropout occurs again between Grades 10 and 12. The question is: Why does this happen? For the primary to secondary phase, the principal reason is that numbers are skewed by late starts and repetition (young learners who are sick tend to have to redo classes), so the actual number of learners in primary schools does not follow a guaranteed progression — which is why there are more primary schools.

In particular in rural areas, studies show that many girls start school later than boys, as they are required to look after younger siblings. It is correct to look at Grades 1 to 12 throughput, but to really understand accurately what is happening, one needs to look at Grade 7 to Grade 8 transitions, for which very little research has been done. The second factor which affects Grades 10-12 is urbanisation as learners in cities and towns can be lured into employment from age 16, and therefore do not complete their education. It is therefore no surprise that under lockdown, when jobs particularly in hospitality were affected, we record the highest level of throughput. Simply put, the factors that would pull learners out of school were dramatically reduced under lockdown restrictions, resulting in more learners writing the examination.

Free State’s success

It is worth making the point that more rural provinces fare more poorly in large part due to the double-pull factor noted above; this is especially true of provinces that include former homelands and were thus underdeveloped. It is not surprising that the Western Cape and Gauteng do well in the NSC examinations as they have no previous homelands in their borders, and potentially benefit from stronger learners leaving rural areas to study in urban schools.

It is therefore unfair to compare provinces in the results. Though it is worth noting the success of the Free State, which includes two former homelands — a part of Bophuthatswana and QwaQwa — and is mainly rural. And yet the Free State is able to top the NSC board every year. There is hope, then, for all provinces. However, as ingrained inequality exists, the process of rating provinces is actually quite damaging and encourages a form of education migration.

While rural education affects the first set of dropout numbers, urbanisation affects the second. South Africa has a unique double-factor education pullout as people transition between both the rural and urban.

More research is required on the dropout issue, but one should be careful to not buy into the politicisation of dropout for two reasons. Firstly, because it builds into the narrative that matric is a be-and-end-all qualification, which undermines the notion of lifelong learning. Secondly, because the analysis of dropout does not accurately reflect the efforts of many to ensure that everyone has access to education.

Anne Baker is the deputy-director of the Catholic Institute of Education. Follow the CIE on Facebook in celebrating the many outstanding achievements of Catholic schools and to keep informed about trends in education. Also see the CIE’s website at www.cie.org.za