Oos Rand Secondary dropped in their pass rate, recording 72% for 2019, a significant decline from the 81% achieved in 2018.
Of all the school’s 153 learners who wrote the matric examinations in 2018, 110 matriculants passed and 43 failed.
The school achieved 16 distinctions; 36 learners qualified to study for a bachelor’s, 60 to study for diploma courses and 17 for higher certificate programmes in TVET colleges.
The school management said they were concerned about the decline in the pass rate, and about the learners who did not pass their exams.
This drop has been attributed to the Department of Education’s decision to allow ‘progressed’ matric learners to write full time, instead of spreading their exams over two years. This saw the vast majority of the total of 16 ‘progressed’ learners failing their matric – and negatively impacting the school’s overall performance.
“These (the progressed learners) are learners who did not pass grade 11 in 2018 and were progressed to Grade 12. Ten of the progressed learners who wrote full time failed. Because they were doing okay in the prelims during the year, the department made it compulsory that they write full time. They failed and their performance cost us around 10%,” said the school principal, Lincoln van Ross.
Subjects that contributed towards the failure are English home language, business studies and maths literacy.
The school management, however, pointed out that the department’s matric intervention programme helped a lot to improve the performance of the learners. “The Saturday classes tremendously helped the learners who attended. The attendance of these classes was, however, not good as many learners could not attend because of transport problems.
“We had about 60 learners from Vosloorus who could not attend the classes because they did not have means of transport,”said Van Ross.
The school also attributed the decline to the socio-economic issues, such as violence, gangsterism, drugs, family instability, absent parents and poor parenting in the community.
“The community environment is also negatively impacting our results. We need community involvement; we need the community to be involved and support the programme and assist the school with the learners. Parents are not even attending parents meeting. Our teachers work very hard and give their all, but without parental involvement and community support we will not make it,” he said.
One of the Grade 12s at the school, Tyrone Sheldon, who achieved two distinctions and two Bs, echoed the remarks by the school management, saying the teachers and the district did their best to empower learners, but the problem lies with the learners, parents and the community as a whole.
“I think the situation around our homes also has a bad influence on us, and this result in poor performance at school,” he said.
However, the school’s 2019 head girl, Jeanay Lynthia Courtney Williams, beat the odds of economic and social hardships at play in the community. She excelled and emerged the top achiever at the school with four distinctions and two Bs.
The school management thanked the top achievers for rising above board and containing the situation, adding that they were ready to work hard in achieving even better results in the coming years and beyond. @MthuphaFanie
