High repetition rate the biggest problem in grades 10 and 11: Motshekga

Access to education‚ migration patterns and improving learner retention are some of the issues the Department of Basic Education will be discussing during its three day lekgotla.

The Basic Education Sector Lekgotla kicked off in Centurion on Monday with Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga delivering the key note address.

The lekgotla‚ Motshekga said‚ is a strategic planning exercise for the education sector to identify areas it needs to jointly work on to strengthen the plans it had worked on the previous year.

• ‘Mathematics isn’t the be-all and end-all of education system’: MotshekgaA “lot” more needs to be done to address low participation rates and poor learner outcomes in mathematics‚ physical science and languages. 

“Of the four indicators we need to look at is access: That’s where the migration patterns for Gauteng and Western Cape are an issue.

“It is your equity: to see how we are doing in terms of poor learners‚ rural learners. That is one of the things we are monitoring to see if we are closing the gap between the poor and disadvantaged learners‚ particularly African learners because they are the most disadvantaged.

Motshekga said the department has in the past year‚ seen “encouraging trends” in the education sector.

“The biggest problem was the high repetition rate in grades 10 and 11.

“That is why we deliberately took the risk of saying schools must support kids not to repeat grade 10 and 11 in big numbers because when we were monitoring‚ we picked up that the repetition rates also affect retentions.

“Kids drop out in big numbers between grades 10 and 11 because there is also a high failure rate at that level.

Progressed learners prove to do better than learners who pass their grades‚ Motshekga said attributing this to “self” motivation.

“I don’t understand how a kid that we had failed gets a distinction and a kid we had passed fails. It means we are not doing right.

“Maybe they [progressed] feel motivated because they have been given a second chance.”

“In the last two years‚ just by having this progression rate‚ we’ve managed to improve our retention from 40 to 58%‚ which is big. It means we have to move the support programme even lower.

“Some of the remedies we are putting in‚ the system is beginning to respond to them‚” said Motshekga.