The department of basic education is implementing “high impact” intervention programmes in grade 5 and 9 classes to prepare pupils for an international benchmarking test in September.
The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (Timss), which is administered every four years, measures pupils’ educational achievement in these two subjects.
SA’s grade 5 pupils were placed third last out of 64 countries in maths in the 2019 segment of the study, while their grade 9 counterparts finished second last.
Briefing parliament on Tuesday, Seliki Tlhabane, the department’s chief director for maths, science and technology (MST), said they held meetings with the provinces to ensure pupils “would be exposed to maths catch-up programmes that are going to help them perform better”.
“Between now and September we have structured support programmes and we are going to check implementation of these programmes to ensure pupils are not thrown under the bus.”
The South African leg of the Timss study is conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council, and only a sample of pupils from these two grades are selected to participate in the assessment.
But Tlhabane said their approach was to support every school and every pupil “regardless of who is selected”.
He was conducting a presentation with another senior official, Phillip Dikgomo, on “capacity building of SA educators for pupils’ improvement in maths, science and technology”.
He said the National Development Plan (NDP) target for 2030 was 450,000 pupils passing matric with a bachelor pass, with maths and science as two of their subjects.
“These numbers were informed by the needs of industry and society. Unless we produce this number of pupils, we will not have sufficient engineers, accountants and all those professionals who require maths and science as a prerequisite to study.”
The maths results dipped from 57.6% in 2021 to 55% last year.
“It’s important for basic education to work hard to produce these types of numbers as they build in the long-term the economy of the country.”
The 2023 target for the maths pass percentage is 60% which has been elusive. It has stubbornly remained in the 50s, which is not the same for other subjects. There is no other subject performing in the 50s except maths.
— Seliki Tlhabane, basic education department’s chief director for maths, science and technology (MST)
Tlhabane, however, expressed concern over the drop in the percentage of pupils studying maths in matric, which fell from 44% in 2019 to 37.2% last year.
“We are coming to report this to members of the portfolio committee so they also become part of the drive to mobilise South Africa and the schooling sector to bring this to the attention of the nation.
“We need to turn this around to try to encourage pupils to take maths.”
He said provinces with low numbers of pupils participating in maths included Free State, North West, Northern Cape and Western Cape.
“The 2023 target for the maths pass percentage is 60% which has been elusive. It has stubbornly remained in the 50s, which is not the same for other subjects. There is no other subject performing in the 50s except maths.”
Tlhabane said they had held 10 meetings since January and put plans in place “to ensure we improve maths [pass percentage] by at least 5% this year to take us to 60%”.
Dikgomo said the underperformance, mainly in maths, was caused by an insufficient number of teachers qualified to teach the subject.
“There was also insufficient support given to teachers because of an uneven and inadequate number of maths subject advisers.”
He said while teachers were professionally qualified, most of those teaching maths had not majored in the subject.
An audit of maths teachers was under way in conjunction with the National Education Collaboration Trust (Nect).
“It has commissioned 10 universities to work in different provinces. They will also access the classrooms to find out what’s happening in them. The audit will give us the number of teachers teaching maths, their ages and gender, and whether they are permanent staff and whether they are foreigners.”
With the exception of KwaZulu-Natal, the number of pupils achieving a 60% pass mark and above in maths dropped in the other eight provinces.
At least 11.3% of pupils achieved 60% and above in maths in KwaZulu-Natal in 2021, but this increased slightly to 11.4% last year.
Responding to the presentations, MP Marina van Zyl said if “sugarcoating was a subject, this department would have surely got an A”.
She referred to teacher development based on an audit of teachers and asked whether this had been done.
“Are there sufficient subject advisers to assist teachers?” she asked.
MP Baxolile Nodada said: “I do think we need to be honest about the depth of the challenge we have in terms of quality teaching in maths and whether we are professionally developing our teachers at the level we are supposed to so that we can compete in an international platform.”
“We’ve seen there’s been a drop in the uptake of maths. As much as we can say we have improved the outcomes, if the uptake has dropped we should be very concerned.”
Responding to questions, basic education minister Angie Motshekga said since the advent of democracy in 1994, teachers mostly came with degrees from universities “with good content knowledge”.
“When I started in the department, getting qualified teachers was a big problem. We had to import from India and Zimbabwe.”
Her director-general, Mathanzima Mwei, said pre- and post-testing of teachers in all subjects was conducted on an ongoing basis to test the competence of teachers.
“Before any professional development initiative, a pre-test and a post-test is administered to test the impact of it.”
He said provinces that performed well in maths had a low number of pupils, adding “logic will tell you that this is the reason they perform better.
“We are pushing provinces to bring more pupils to do maths and get them to do well.”
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