Educators fret about ‘worrisome decline’ in matric Maths marks

The National Professional Teachers Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa) has predicted that the overall percentage of matriculants who passed will be higher than last year‚ but education experts say South Africa still faces a quality problem.

The overall and provincial pass marks will be released on Wednesday evening and matriculants will receive their individual results on Thursday.

Umalusi‚ the body which standardises results‚ has already said the 2016 Maths and Maths Literacy results are very poor. Maths Literacy is the easier of the two subjects.

Naptosa executive director Basil Manuel said the union was expecting a slight increase in the percentage of matrics who passed in 2016‚ up from 70.7% in 2015. “A large increase would be suspicious.”

“We predict a slight increase in pass mark results‚ but Naptosa still believes the quality of passes is what really matters.”

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A matric pass mark requires a student to get 40% and above for two subjects and their home language and 30% or above for the other three.

Education professor Elizabeth Walton‚ of the University of the Witwatersrand‚ said: “To just talk about the pass rate‚ I don't think we're learning an awful lot about the system reporting [results] at that level. It doesn't really tell us how we could be improving the system. Far more useful questions [to ask] are about subjects in particular.”

In a briefing last week‚ Umalusi said Mathematical Literacy was one area where “learner performance is critically low” and has been since 2014.

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Manuel said the issue should be investigated - saying that previously about 70% of those who wrote the Maths Literacy exam had passed‚ but that had dropped to 35%.

“It is a worrisome decline‚” he said.

In 2015‚ about 25% of pupils who wrote matric (or just under 130 000) passed Mathematics‚ but only 31.9% of those who passed got above 49%.

Maths education lecturer Jacques du Plessis‚ of the University of the Witwatersrand‚ said teachers needed to have better content knowledge and knowledge of how to teach that content properly.

• IEB ‘proud of the achievements of the Class of 2016’The Independent Examinations Board (IEB) declared itself “proud of the achievements of the Class of 2016” after its candidates achieved a pass rate of 98.67% - marginally up on last year’s 98.3%.

“Teachers feel battered and bruised. They need to be upskilled and supported.”

Walton‚ said the poor pupil performance in Mathematics and Mathematical Literacy was nothing new‚ but a reminder of the subject's horrific legacy in South Africa‚ stemming from apartheid education policies.

“There aren't any quick fixes. We need incremental improvement in the lower grades year to year‚” Walton said

According to Walton‚ problems in Maths emerge as early as Grade 4 in the poorer schools.

“We need interventions in the foundation and intermediate phases of school [primary school]. We can't pick up problems in Grade 9‚ start interventions then and expect to see results.”

– TMG Digital