Our matric results and schooling: two ways of doing the maths

Jonathan Jansen, rector of the University of the Free State, responds to the recently released 2012 matric results with some cynicism, while , Bobby Soobrayan director-general of basic education, finds much to cheer about

ON Thursday last week a handful of members of the Congress of South African Students gathered to protest in Durban against the release of Grade 12 final results in the media. The results were embarrassing to failing pupils, they argued.

I agree but would go further: the results of the national senior certificate exam are an embarrassment to the country. In fact, I know of no nation in the world that would make such a public spectacle in celebration of the mediocrity of its school system.

Following a disastrous year for the reputation of the minister of basic education, Angie Motshekga - many expected her to be fired, if only for the textbook scandal in Limpopo - the results provided just the kind of relief she needed.

The partisan crowd assembled for the minister's announcement of the results broke into raucous applause as the increase in each subject's pass rate was announced. What they did not notice in the fervour of the moment were the subjects left out in this triumphalist account of school performance - those in which there had been a drop in the pass rate, such as the life sciences (by almost 3%) and business studies.

Nobody in that upbeat room asked why, again, more than half-a-million children who started 12 years ago in Grade 1 did not even make it to Grade 12.

Nobody noticed the now consistent drop in the number of male pupils writing and passing the examinations, compared with girls. Nobody asked why there were even fewer pupils writing mathematics or physics than in 2009 and 2010, the non-exceptional years in terms of examination enrolments.

Nobody asked why the proportion of pupils writing mathematical literacy has again risen sharply in relation to those in the 2012 class doing mathematics.

And nobody dared to ask the damning question about how the performance of pupils passing with admission to degree studies at university would break down in terms of race and class.

In 2012 more full-time pupils wrote (+15062) and passed (+29712) than in 2011; that much we know. The percentage increase in the pass rate has gone up in every year since 2009, when it was 60.6%; in 2010 it was 67.8%, in 2011 it was 70.2%, and in 2012 it was 73.9%.

Even before the results were declared to be valid and fair by Umalusi, the Council for Quality Assurance in General and Further Education and Training, the minister told us that the pass rate would go up. It will go up again and again and again because she says so, and before long she will declare that her goal of 75% has been reached even before 2014.

She will learn, as did the former minister of education, Kader Asmal, that those percentages eventually come down because they cannot be sustained by political declaration.

The most serious indictment of the happy crowd at the announcement of the results, and much of the media, for that matter, was that nobody asked: "What do these results mean?"

National examination results communicate two messages - one direct and the other indirect. The direct message has to do with the performance of individual pupils, in this case all 511152 who sat for the terminal school exams. Like many parents and teachers, I am obviously delighted that more children experience some kind of success in these examinations.

But the indirect message refers to the state of the school system. Do these results mean that the quality of teaching and learning in our schools is improving? From the 2012 national senior certificate results, there is no evidence for such a claim at all. In fact, the evidence from much more reliable studies indicates exactly the opposite.

The recent Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study reports (both 2011) show that South African children perform way below their counterparts in other developing countries in science, mathematics and literacy.

The recent World Economic Forum's annual report on financial development placed South Africa dead last in a survey of 62 countries (including poor states such as Bangladesh, Kenya, Colombia and Tanzania) in the quality of science and mathematics education.

One of the most sophisticated studies on this topic, in one South African province, suggests why: "The amount of time during the year that teachers actually teach learners mathematics is disturbingly low ... Teachers did not teach 60% of the lessons they were scheduled to teach." (From The Low Achievement Trap, 2012, by Martin Carnoy, Linda Chisholm and Bagele Chilisa.)

If this is the case, what was all the hype about last week? What the minister did not tell us was that her standard for determining the pass rate was based on all pupils who obtained a 30% mark and higher. If the almost universal standard for passing was set at 50% (already too low), what would the real performance of South African children look like?

Hold on to your seats.

With 50% as the pass mark, only 22.7% would pass mathematics, 24.4% physical science, 24.8% life sciences, 24.4% geography and 17.8% agricultural sciences. Most of these pupils will be in the former white schools.

Even if you dropped the pass mark to 40%, more than 60% of pupils would still fail mathematics and physical science. Now you know why the politicians (and here I include Umalusi's overly sensitive chairman) cling so desperately to the 30% pass mark.

There are two serious questions all South Africans must ask themselves: In a globally connected world and a 21st-century economy demanding high-level skills and competent citizens, what are we prepared to settle for?

And in a country still marked by injustice and inequality for the children of the poor, where do those young people feature in these substandard results?