What do you do when your child fails at a task? Do you make the task less difficult? Do you remove it? Or do you find a way to help your child gain the skills necessary to succeed?
Most parents would want to equip their children to succeed. There might be extra lessons, experts might be called in and you would sit and work through the task again and again with your children, knowing full well that if you don't you will be setting them up for continued failure.
That's what a normal parent would do.
But not the Department of Basic Education, which, for all intents and purposes, is a parent to thousands of pupils in state schools around the country.
No, when kids start failing maths at school, and reports from across the country tell of poor results in the subject, the department simply drops the compulsory pass requirement from an already low 40% to a pathetic 20%.
It says that this does not apply to all grades, only to grades seven to nine.
And it's not all pupils; only those who were passing in other subjects but failing in maths, which means they can't be promoted because mathematics is a compulsory pass subject.
The department uses the word "condone" instead of "pass" but that's mere semantics - pupils who get only 20% for maths will be allowed to progress to the next grade.
It's a once-off measure to "address the challenges", it says.
It's balderdash. All we are doing is setting up these children for failure. We are sending children who didn't fully grasp the material taught in their grade on to the next one.
Do we really expect them to cope with the demands of the higher grade?
No one wants to be held back but "condoning" them until Grade 9 just postpones the problem to when they reach Grade 10, when they can no longer be condoned. The department needs to be a proper parent and provide teachers who can work with kids struggling with maths and ensure that they pass.
It's not rocket science.
Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package. 
