The matric class of 2020 has done us proud and they deserve to take a bow. During the hard lockdown last year, doomsayers were calling for the scrapping of the academic year. One prominent academic even suggested that all pupils should be progressed to the next grade.
But despite the unprecedented challenge posed by Covid-19, including the loss of teaching time and fears of contracting Covid-19 at school, teachers and matric pupils put their shoulders to the wheel and bravely soldiered on. They displayed resilience and true grit in the face of insurmountable odds and the fruit of their labour was a 76.2% national pass rate. Though it dropped by 5.1% from 81.3% in 2019, it is still a truly remarkable achievement under the circumstances.
As if attending classes during the pandemic were not stressful enough, the matrics had to contend with the leakage of the maths paper two and physical science paper two, and endure an agonising wait to see whether they would be forced to rewrite them. Fortunately, the Pretoria high court set aside the department of basic education’s decision for a national rewrite. A subsequent investigation by the National Investigations Task Team found that widespread leaks did not seem to have occurred.
Some of the positives from the results were that 210,820 pupils achieved admission to Bachelor studies, including 115,444 from no-fee paying schools. At least 20% of Bachelor passes came from quintile 1 to 3 schools (the poorest schools) compared to 14.4% from quintile 4 and 5 or wealthier schools. The 2020 class produced 177,435 distinctions compared to 156,884 in 2019. The number of schools where not a single candidate passed dropped from 16 in 2019 to nine schools and only two of the 75 districts recorded a pass rate of below 60%.
Although the pass rate dropped by 5.1% from 81.3% in 2019, it is still a truly remarkable achievement under the circumstances.
However, what has been disconcerting to note is that the number of pupils choosing maths last year, which is a crucial gateway subject, dropped by 15,000. The department needs to investigate the reason for the steep drop in the number of maths enrolments. Is it perhaps because of the abominable practice of “gatekeeping” whereby schools deliberately encourage pupils to study maths literacy instead of maths because they are afraid their pass rate will dip?
It is also worrying that the number of schools that achieved a 100% pass rate dropped from 439 in 2019 to 302 last year.
But the biggest disappointment was the 37% pass rate achieved by the so-called progressed learners which refers to those pupils who failed grade 11 but were pushed on to grade 12.
For the first time last year, a total of 65,499 progressed learners wrote all papers during one exam sitting and only 24,244 passed.
In previous years, they were allowed to write some papers at the end of the year and the remainder in June of the following year through a system known as the Multiple Examination Opportunity (MEO).
Basic education minister Angie Motshekga acknowledged that “because of the challenges we had in 2020, we were not able to support them fully”.
But even when 88,828 progressed learners were allowed to write their exams over two years through the MEO system at the end of 2018 and in June 2019, only 5,836 passed in total. There was no Covid pandemic at the time, yet these pupils performed so dismally.
A conscious and concerted effort needs to be made by Motshekga’s department and the provincial education departments to urgently provide adequate and continuous support to progressed learners. They desperately need the extra attention because they failed grade 11 and were allowed to “progress” to grade 12 as a result of the department’s progression policy. If they are not assisted timeously, then we should not be appalled by the huge number of progressed learners failing year after year.
LISTEN | Two-thirds of 2020 academic year was lost to Covid-19 school closures
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