Durban - The number of progressed pupils in matric has increased significantly from last year, prompting fears that this will drag down the matric pass rate.
Preliminary figures released by the Department of Basic Education this week suggest that the class of 2016 includes 104 136 progressed pupils - 38 463 more than last year. The biggest jump was in KwaZulu-Natal, where the figure has increased by 17 403, from 10 633 in 2015 to 28 036 this year.
The news has prompted fears that the high numbers could affect the pass rate, particularly in KZN, which performed dismally last year.
Last year’s national matric pass rate of 70.7% was a drop from the 2014 pass rate of 75.8%, and the performance of thousands of pupils pushed through to Grade 12 for the first time was blamed in part.
KZN’s pass rate was just 60.7% in 2015.
Rufus Poliah, the Department of Basic Education’s chief director of the national assessment and public examinations, presented the figures to the media in Pretoria on Tuesday. He emphasised that they were preliminary.
“Our systems are not where they need to be in terms of collecting data on progressed learners because one needs to understand it’s a new policy,” he said.
The department was not certain that the criteria for progression were being applied correctly and it was conducting an audit on sample schools to ensure that the figures were correct. KZN was one of the provinces it was particularly concerned about.
The number of progressed pupils had decreased in the Free State and the Western Cape, and Poliah said this was a good sign.
“We are hoping that we will get to a point where there will be no reason for progression,” he said. Poliah said the department’s new three-tier education plan - to split pupils into academic-driven schools, technical vocational schools and technical occupational schools - was a step in the right direction.
”A number of our learners who are progressed should not be in the academic stream,” he said.
Poliah said that for him, progression was an “interim measure” to assist pupils.
“They become frustrated, demoralised and drop out and become delinquents,” he said. “You rather allow them to progress. But remember, the critical aspect here is that progression is not pass one, pass all’. The learner must still satisfy the requirements at the end of Grade 12.”
Professor Wayne Hugo, of UKZN’s school of education, called the increase in progressed pupils in KZN “a tragedy”. “It points to a system that is shifting from a failing system to a collapsing system,” he said. “The number of progressed learners more than doubled. This means that KZN is really struggling.”
Hugo said there could be many reasons for this, including infighting within the ANC and the impact of Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS) - which, he said, forced teachers to keep pace with the curriculum, even if pupils did not understand what was going on - on the poorer provinces.
Hugo said where the numbers of progressed pupils decreased, this could be because the education system had improved or because political and educational pressure had forced the schools in the province to “hide” their failed pupils. “With no evidence that the Western Cape and the Free State have actively tried to exclude progressed pupils, we have to assume these systems are showing improvement,” he said.
Nic Spaull, an education researcher at the universities of Stellenbosch and Johannesburg, thought the underlying issues affecting the matric results were rooted in primary and secondary schools, and the accumulated learning deficits children acquired as they proceeded to higher grades. “I do not think that we should be focusing all our attention on the matric results,” he said.
He thought part of the increase in the number of progressed pupils this year was actually just because the department was getting better at recording who were actually progressed pupils and who were not.
“Last year, there were many more than 64 000 progressed learners, but the official number was 64 000,” he said.
Spaull said it was important to note the high number of pupils who never made it to matric and the low number of pupils who qualified to go to university. “We need to find other routes for learners, rather than our current matric-or-nothing and university-or-nothing system,” he said.
Basil Manuel, the executive director of the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa), said yesterday that the union supported progression and that the indefinite retention of children in the system did not best serve them. “Our concern lies in the support they receive,” he said. “It stands to reason that they need more support than the average learner and we don’t have much evidence to suggest that they are receiving the support they require”.
The department’s pre-conditions for progression include that pupils must:
* Pass four of the seven subjects.
* Pass the language of learning and teaching.
* Have attended school on a regular basis (Not missed more than 20 days and have valid reasons for missing days).
* Have complied with the school based assessment requirements.
The Mercury