The South African Communist Party in Mpumalanga province welcomes the outcome of the 2019 Grade 12 results which showed a significant improvement from the previous years,
from 79% in 2018 to 80,3%. This is an improvement of 1,3%. First time Mpumalanga broke the 80% pass rate barrier.
The Party salutes all those who have contributed to this success, including the hard work of the learners, the teachers, the trade union movement within the sector, the school
governing bodies, the parents and all other partners in the sector who helped the province to surpass the 80% pass rate.
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It is also against this background that the SACP pays homage to the efforts of the officials in the Mpumalanga Department of Education, led by the MEC for education who is also the
provincial secretary of the South African Communist Party, Cde Bonakele Majuba for their sterling work in ensuring that the province improved its performance.
Their achievement has proven wrong the populist criticism levelled by rightwing and counter revolutionary elements that the “MEC was not visible” while others were even
calling for a Hollywood style approach to matters of education.
As the SACP, we believe that the success or failure of our education system cannot be determined by the number of times that an individual MEC appears in the mass and social
media, but by a combination of factors, including the improvement of the working conditions of the teachers, A conducive learning environment and the participation of all partners.
The marked improvement and performance of the public education sector over the years is beginning to challenge the hegemony of “free market education”, which has seen the
mushrooming of private colleges around the country.
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The latest achievement has demonstrated beyond doubt that it is no longer necessary for parents to pay exorbitant amounts of money for tuition and transport in search of quality education for their children, but that they can get free quality education right at their doorstep.
It is against this background that the SACP calls on government to match this latest performance by investing more in education to tackle the legacy of apartheid where schools
in the townships and rural areas have an acute lack of resources, while their counterparts in the former Model C schools bear the characteristics of opulence. These conditions help
breed inequality in our society. Thus, the SACP calls on the provincial government to implement the Minimum Uniform Norms and Standards for Public School Infrastructure in all township and rural schools without any further delays.
