Education authorities for Alex schools have expressed disappointment with last year’s overall matric results which are below the district, provincial and national average.
The five schools including Alex High, KwaBhekilanga, Realogile, Eastbank and Minerva achieved an average of 74 percent, a drop of 11.2 percent from the previous year’s 83.58 percent. This is below the district’s target of 80 percent and further eludes the 100 percent mark to be achieved by township schools in the province.
This was said by concerned Joburg East District director Raymond Martin when releasing the department’s analysis of the results to stakeholders at the Multi Purpose Centre.
The average is less than 83.9 percent for the district, 84.7 percent achieved provincially and 74.8 percent nationally. This he said has prompted poor performers and Realogile, Eastbank and Minerva have been classified priority schools for intervention. Comparatively, the three schools also dropped by 11.2 percent, 17.5 percent and 19.2 percent respectively from the 2013 results while better performing Alex High dropped by 4.4 percent from 87.7 to 83.3 percent and KwaBhekilanga by 3.5 percent from 97.6 to 94.1 percent.
Also, and with exception of 2013 when the average for all five schools was 83.6 percent, the analysis reflects progress of only 9.1 percent from 2011 when they attained 64.9 percent to the current 74 percent.
The analysis also reveals problematic subjects as accounting, where the lowest school, Minerva, received 24 percent for the subject and the highest school, Alex high, got 95 percent. Minerva received 31.5 percent for mathematics and KwaBhekilanga received 92.7 percent. Realogile received 36 percent for physical science and KwaBhekilanga recieved 80.6 percent for the subject.
Martin attributed the problem to various causes including the quality of teachers who he urged the school governing bodies to appoint the best; parental involvement only when children got to Grade 12; lack of punctuality and ill-discipline of pupils and some teachers.
He said while the best achiever, KwaBhekilanga, should be lauded, the schools were surpassed by Ivory Park with an average of 84 percent and were still a long way from catching up with other provincial schools.
He urged the community and all stakeholders to regard education as a societal priority and to partner with schools to improve their children’s education to avoid them gravitating to crime after failing in school.
