Matric results should not be announced – Thuli Madonsela

Former public protector Thuli Madonsela has criticised the announcement of annual matric results, saying it should not be done at all. Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga will announce the National Senior Certificate examination results for the class of 2018 on Thursday night, though the move has received criticism from the former public protector and Equal Education.

Madonsela said announcing results only opened the door for political pressure to be exerted to prioritise form over substance.

“I am concerned that the lowering of the pass mark to below the universal 50% was in response to the political pressure to appear achieving,” she said.

Equal Education also said the annual matric pass rate announcement was a “misleading fanfare” that provided a poor indication of the overall health of the basic education system.

“A narrow preoccupation with matric results also limits the scope of important conversations that should be had about basic education, not only at this time of the year, but consistently.

“This was particularly evident when the announcement of a 75.1% matric pass rate for 2017 followed the release of the devastating results of an international reading study – that 78% of Grade 4 learners in our country cannot read for meaning, in any language,” it said.

The basic education picture was, however, not entirely bleak, said Equal Education.

“Access rates to early childhood education are also improving, and the increase in matric qualifications awarded each year is exceeding population growth. Passing matric is a tremendous achievement for each individual learner, and we commend the diligence and perseverance of the Class of 2018, their teachers, and their families.”

Equal Education said that the high learner dropout rate was in contrast to  the basic education department’s claim that the matric pass rate has consistently been above 70% over the past few years and that it is increasing.

“A look at the throughput rate suggests that the pass rate has actually been declining and ranges between 41% and 37%. Without access to more detailed data, this metric unfortunately remains rather crude – it is affected by learners who repeat grades or leave school to attend technical and vocational education training (TVET) colleges.”

When there factors are considered, an analysis by the department suggested that the real pass rate still hovered just above 50% for the past few years.

Equal Education also criticised ranking of provinces, saying it also failed to consider the dropout rates.

“This annual announcement, based on the traditional pass rate, not only fails to consider learner dropout rates, it also ignores the immense contextual disparities between rural and urban provinces.

“The provinces that reflected the largest improvements in their 2017 pass rates (Eastern Cape, Limpopo and Kwazulu-Natal), were also the provinces with the biggest decrease in learners who wrote the matric exams.”

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