Punish principals for poor matric results: Zuma

President Jacob Zuma says there should be consequences for principals whose schools recorded a 0% matric pass rate last year.

In his address at the Basic Education Sector lekgotla in Centurion yesterday, he said: "There must be consequences for principals and school management teams who reported a 0% pass rate.

"We must not allow any room in the public sectors for ineptitude and incompetence. Everyone must strive for excellence, more so in education."

Zuma said: "Now as you heard, I never went to a senior school. No teacher can claim [that] they ever saw my forehead in class because I never went there. But when I hear there is a school that produced only 0%, I ask [a] question: from January to November, what were they doing really?"

Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said some of the problems in such schools were caused by the government and communities.

Motshekga said: "We had instructed provinces to close unviable schools in rural areas because if a school has five matriculants it can't provide for them."

She said KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape and Limpopo had a number of these unviable schools .