Matric picture improves but overall system looks worse

Expressed in percentage terms for those high-school students who wrote matric at the end of 2011 the system has indeed delivered a markedly improved performance with much to be pleased about. Looked at in isolation however it also hides the fact that the system as a whole has done worse in delivering candidates to sit the final exam -- with disturbing signs that some culling takes place in lower grades or even during the 12^th grade year.

Delving beyond only the figures of those students who actually sat the exams and the comparative percentages relative to previous years, reveals that despite the substantial increase in figures of pupils involved in the overall system, the number of students who made it through to writing the exams has come down. Less than half of the pupils enrolling for grade one make it through the system to the exams at the end of grade 12 – only 496 090 out of 1 035 192.

Over the last four years the number of pupils enrolling on a full-time basis for the grade 12 exams has been coming down steadily from 588 643 in 2008 to 511 038 last year. Interestingly enough, however the decline is considerably less severe when the number of part-time candidates is also included in the calculation. For full-time candidates the decline from 2010 to 2011 is 47 942, but when part-time candidates are brought into the equation the decline shrinks to 17 715.

In fact, one of the more interesting trends indicated by figures contained in the department of basic education’s Technical Report on the National Senior Certificate  Examination (NSC) for 2011 is a strong upward curve for the number of part-time candidates that enrol for the NSC-examinations. Over the last three years it grew by a massive almost 190%, from 39 255 in 2009 to 112 780 in 2011. As a percentage of the total number of candidates who wrote the exams, part-time candidates went up from 6.3% in 2009 to 18% in 2011.

A disturbing figure is the 14 948 fewer candidates who pitched to write the exams than the number who enrolled. This seems to suggest that, in a quest to improve their percentages, some schools are persuading some weaker candidates to pull out of the exams – probably after the so-called preliminary exams at the end of the third term.

According to educational specialist and vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State, Prof Jonathan Jansen, in an article written for the Weekend Argus: “There is a nasty micropolitics of schooling at play here. It is common knowledge that schools, under tremendous political pressure to improve their pass rates, do two things.

“They hold pupils back in earlier grades, especially Grade 11; and they downgrade pupils into easier subjects, such as mathematical literacy over pure mathematics.”

While there have been wide celebrations about the improvement of the matric-results of 2011 as suggested by the percentages, and some progress can be rightfully claimed, it is also clear that the simple reliance on the percentage pass rates is misleading. Fact is that despite the percentages, in absolute numbers 2011 produced 16 030 more NSC-holders than 2010 did.

Some trends, such as  the sharp growth in part-time candidates, also begs closer scrutiny. Likewise, without a proper explanation as to the reason for it, the dropout-figure of nearly 15 000 candidates between enrolment and actually writing the exams gives cause for unease.