Matric results are a yardstick to assess the education system of the country in the basic education fraternity. These results are very important to get a clearer picture and the direction to which the education system of South Africa is going. Every year, the minister of basic education publicly announces the Matric results, but the results always get divided attention and commentaries from various education commentators. The department celebrate the ‘’victory of improved’’ pass rate while others criticize and even reveal that the Matric results in South Africa are always questionable. This paper looks closely into the alleged fabrication of Matric results in South Africa by the Department of education. The paper will further give reasons why there has been ‘’fabrication’’ and what can be done to remedy the situation.
If the company uses its funds to send ten first year students to the university to do a three-year course, the company is expecting to receive ten graduates at the end of a three-year period. If the company receives anything less than ten graduates after three years, it means the company lost some investments to the students who couldn’t graduate on record time (after three years). Consequently, the company will now have to fork out extra funding to carry the failing students through until they graduate. Alternatively, the company can dump students and lose the money they invested in these students. What the company now has to do is to record a loss and request for extra funding which has to be redeemed in future in one way or the other. Thus, after three years, the company can’t celebrate any victory for there’s no victory – a victory would have been ten graduates which corresponds with ten students who were sent to the university, that’s the only victory.
Similarly, Matric results should be judged in the same manner. The true mechanism to judge Matric results is also a three-year period assessment tool that will reflect the true progress or downfall of our education system in south Africa. For an example: The number of learners who register and enrol GR10 in 2020, how many of them reach Matric on record time in 2022 and how many of them passes Matric thereafter will be the true Matric results assessment mechanism. We can’t celebrate 80-90% fabricated Matric results in 2022 while people who sat for Matric exams are actually half of the people who registered for Gr10 in 2020. The question is: where are other learners who should be here (in Matric)? Why are we celebrating while we have a large number of learners who never reached Matric? Our celebration is a fabrication because we are overlooking the true picture of Matric results. The true reflection of matric results refers to the number of learners who moved from Gr10 to 12 within a three-year period and they successfully passed their Matric. This year (2020), the learners who are currently in Matric were in Gr10 in 2018. But not all of them from the Gr10 2018 group are currently in Matric in 2020… where are others? What happened to them? Is the department still going to overlook the fact that what they invested in 2018 is not what they will celebrate in 2020? The department is already running at a loss because not all the 2018 GR10s they registered are in Matric in 2020. But at the end of this year the department will be celebrating the ‘’victory of pass rate increase’’ yet majority of our learners remained behind with no future to look forward to. This is a true sign of the decline of the education system in our country! This is the veracity about Matric results in South Africa!
To prove the validity of our argument here and bring about correspondence of ideas, News24 published an article in 2019 in relation to the 2018 Matric results titled ‘’ The ‘real’ Matric pass rate is 37.6%’’(https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/the-real-matric-pass-rate-is-376-da-20190104). This followed after the Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga announced a 2018 national pass rate of 78.2% of the National Senior Certificate examinations – a 3.1% increase from 2017. The article argued the following: In 2016, the department registered just over a million (1 067 075) Grade 10s, and only less than half of that million wrote Matric in 2018 (512 735)! Which means, of those 2016 Gr10s, 554 340 learners did not reach Matric in 2018, and only 37.6% of those Grade 10s passed Matric in 2018. The article concluded that, based on the above argument, the real Matric pass rate for 2018 was 37.6%, not 78.2%! The department of education have been operating under pretence and under fallacy because they have been hiding the veracity about Matric results. They have been deliberately using the wrong mechanism to calculate Matric results to fool the public.
This is alarming! It further raises questions around how long has this been going on and how long does the department plans to continue with this fabrication and a false reflection of what our education system is producing? One amongst the reasons of this, is because the education system in south Africa needs urgent transformation in terms of its curriculum. As long as the curriculum remains the same, learners will always struggle to witness academic success and the department will forever be forced to fabricate Matric results and hide the reality to the public. If those who are entrusted with the responsibility to champion the education system of our nation are serious and understands the urgent need of a new curriculum structure, there would be no need to fabricate Matric results every year and send a wrong picture to the public. This is happening because the education fraternity in south Africa lacks formidable research on curriculum development and how to align that curricula with what the learners are demanding. One vivid proof that education in south Africa is in shambles is the fact that even the pass requirement standards have been lowered until 30%! Where on earth can you be regarded successful (passed a subject) for failing 70% content of that particular subject and only salvage its 30%? We are here to reveal the veracity about the Matric result. We believe that, the day South African education authorities hold themselves accountable and take charge of education and lead it well, they would adopt a three-year period as a mechanism to assess the direction our education is taking. In the meantime, the education system in our country is experiencing and suffering fallacy and act of pretence which is an insult to parents and our people at large.
Personalized education curriculum system (PECS) is a transformative education curriculum system that, through its nature of design, will put an end to the whole confusion around curriculum debates and Matric pass rate. PECS will further sort out the pass requirement standards once and for all. PECS seeks to bring back the value and the dignity of our education system. PECS policies depicts that the public deserves to have the correct information regarding the Matric results. We believe that a three-year time frame is the true mechanism to provide a true time tested reflection of Matric pass rate. PECS is of the view that we strive to drive Gr10s to Matric and from that we then pronounce the pass rate, a fair pass rate, a true pass rate and an informed pass rate.
Learn more about PECS? Click here: https://simnandisolutions.co.za/personalized-education/ – Click on PECS Powerpoint presentation.