Failure in matric ‘starts with primary school teaching‘

Barbara Hollands EAST LONDON CORRESPONDENT

WITH the Eastern Cape‘s worst matric pass rate in seven years still sending shockwaves throughout the province, the education fraternity has made recommendations for the way forward in a bid to prevent a repetition of the dire results.

Only 50,6 per cent of Eastern Cape matrics passed, with a staggering 30494 failures.

Only four of the 23 school districts – Grahamstown, Port Elizabeth, Graaff-Reinet and East London – improved their pass rates on last year.

Critics say the provincial education department‘s failure to adequately train teachers in the new Outcomes-Based Education curriculum is at the heart of this crisis.

The Class of 2008 was the first to write the new National Senior Certificate exams but many teachers were not trained in the new subjects, a critical oversight which the department has acknowledged.

Inadequate resources, particularly in rural Transkei schools, a lack of subject advisers and a serious shortage of teachers, particularly in maths and science, added to the calamity.

Educationalists also blamed inadequate teaching of reading, writing and numeracy in junior grades as the root of the plummeting marks.

Sadtu provincial secretary Mxolisi Dimaza said the department had “offered very little input ... regarding training in the new curriculum”.

Its intervention programme, including radio discussions on setworks and study guides for matrics, had also started too late in the year.

Dimaza said a way forward would be to have an education summit before the beginning of the school year to thrash out problem areas, particularly the plight of Transkei schools.

“They say they will call it (the summit) but they do nothing about it.”

He suggests subject advisers in Transkei districts; offering incentives to attract teachers, particularly in maths and science, to short-staffed rural areas; and ensuring schools have enough desks, electricity, computers, libraries and laboratories.

Dimaza said the province was capable of attaining a pass rate above 60% if these areas were addressed.

Educationalist and academic Ken Alston said the matric results were a testament to desperately inadequate teaching at Grade 1, 2 and 3 level.

“Eighty per cent of children in Grade 6 can‘t read. There are children who go into high school with no fractions or geometry. The primary schools have not taught them because the teachers don‘t know how.”

Mdantsane principal Funiwe Zweni, of Sakisizwe High School, said her teachers required additional training in OBE. She also needed more staff because of all the paperwork the new curriculum required.

But provincial education MEC Mahlubandile Qwase said this week that disadvantaged schools would be attended to in the department's Learner Attainment Improvement Strategy, while the Foundation for Learning campaign focused on reading, writing and numeracy.

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