Why do the Free State, Gauteng and the Western Cape outperform the other provinces in the matric exams?
“Their secret in getting good results is in getting as little a number of pupils as possible to take maths and to try to get as many pupils as possible to do maths literacy [the easier subject].”
These controversial comments were made by Seliki Tlhabane, chief director for maths, science and technology in the department of basic education, during a briefing to parliament on Tuesday night.
He singled out the three provinces because “these are the three provinces we always celebrate as producing good results”.
Last year Free State was the country’s top-performing province after achieving an overall pass rate of 85.7%, followed by Gauteng (82.8%) and Western Cape (81.2%).
Delivering a presentation on “maths, science and technology strategies and interventions”, he said that in 2018 more than half the matrics in the Eastern Cape (55.5%), KwaZulu-Natal (53.1%), Limpopo (51.1%) and Mpumalanga (54.3%) wrote maths.
In contrast, only 39% of pupils from the Free State, 37.2% from Gauteng and 30.4% from the Western Cape wrote the subject.
“But because of the glory that we give to the Free State, Gauteng and the Western Cape, the Eastern Cape decided they are going to drop their maths enrolment as well. In 2021, the percentage of pupils writing maths dropped to 48% from 55.5%. If you look at KZN, 53.1% wrote maths in 2018 and it dropped to 36.9% in 2021.”
Because of the glory that we give to the Free State, Gauteng and the Western Cape, the Eastern Cape decided they are going to drop their maths enrolment as well.
— Seliki Tlhabane
Tlhabane added: “It’s all because they [the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal] are looking at provinces like Gauteng, the Western Cape and the Free State and saying: ‘Why should we be offering more pupils maths when the Free State, Gauteng and the Western Cape, who are being celebrated, are not encouraging pupils to take maths?’”
Nationally, the percentage of pupils writing maths dropped by 8.8% from 45.6% in 2018 to 36.8% last year.
“We cannot only have 36.8% of grade 12s writing maths. The 61.2% of children who did maths literacy are not going to help us grow the economy. It is something we are working on.”
At least 57.6% of those writing maths last year achieved a pass percentage of 30% and more compared with 53.8% in 2020. Only 13.3% of maths candidates obtained a pass percentage of 60% or more last year.
“Our first and immediate goal is to hit a 60% pass in maths. We have never hit 60% in the history of the country and that is why it will be a huge achievement if we hit 60%.”
The National Development Plan has a target of 450,000 grade 12 pupils achieving a bachelor pass with maths and science by 2030. The figure for the end of this year is 191,952.
He said provinces with fewer pupils writing maths were able to get them to pass.
He said 28.5% of grade 12 pupils in North West and 39.1% of their counterparts from the Western Cape achieved 50% and above in maths last year.
“Have this at the back of your mind that these are fewer pupils that are doing maths in these provinces.”
He said the system under which provinces were ranked as number one, two and three, according to their overall matric pass percentage, was one of the factors contributing towards the low enrolment in maths.
We don’t have teachers who are able to see the capacity of a child and redirect that child to a class of maths and physical science. We don’t have SA teachers who have the interest of this country at heart.
— Bongiwe Mbinqo-Gigaba
The chairperson of the basic education portfolio committee, Bongiwe Mbinqo-Gigaba, said: “We don’t have teachers who are able to see the capacity of a child and redirect that child to a class of maths and physical science. We don’t have SA teachers who have the interest of this country at heart.
“Are we saying all the teachers we are having do not have an interest in teaching maths any more? What happened to the Dinaledi schools that were meant to be there for maths and physical science?”
Commenting on the dwindling pupil enrolment in maths, she said solutions needed to be found “if there is no energy from our pupils to do maths”.
“There needs to be interventions. What are we going to tell our children in the next 10 years when there are no mathematicians in this country?”
Western Cape education department spokesperson Bronagh Hammond told Sunday Times Daily they did not discourage “maths participation”.
“On the contrary, we have a whole maths strategy because we want to see improved participation and performance.”
She said they advised pupils that maths and physical science were compulsory for entry into certain faculties at universities and for engineering programmes at TVET (technical and vocational education and training) colleges.
Hammond said they had a teacher mentorship programme to improve pupils’ maths performance.
“The department recently launched a maths strategy to, among other things, encourage a positive mindset and foster a genuine love for the beauty of maths.”
Gauteng education spokesperson Steve Mabona referred queries to the department of basic education, while his counterparts from the Free State, Eastern Cape and KZN did not respond at the time of publication.
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