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Alarming decrease in matric pass rates
By Fiona Forde
As the country tut-tuts over the declining matric pass rates, analysts point to an alarming increase in the failure rate if the drop-out figures are taken into account.
The Centre for Education Policy Development (CEPD) has shown that of the 1 550 790 pupils who entered the system in 1998, only 551 940 made it to Grade 12 and wrote the final exam last year, a startling statistic that affects the official 60.6 percent pass rate released this week.
Of the 500 000 or so matrics who wrote the exam, 217 331 failed, representing a failure rate of 39.4 percent. But if the 998 850 pupils who got lost in the system during those 12 years were taken into account, the headline figures would change.
'It's a ticking time bomb'
The failure rate would double to 79 percent, the pass rate would shrink accordingly and the drop-out figure would stand at 64 percent, suggesting that it's not six in 10 young people who are passing matric, as the Department of Basic Education's figures show, but six in 10 young people who are getting no education at all, a damning indictment of the education system and the country.
The department is adamant that the drop-out figure is much lower - acting Director-General Bobby Soobrayan has suggested that the "survival rate to Grade 12" is closer to 50 percent.
His argument is based on a years-old departmental study that showed that 46 percent of pupils stayed the course. He backs it up with the Household Survey from last October, which, he says, "shows that 84 percent of 16 to 18-year-olds are involved in some kind of education or training".
Soobrayan also believes that there is "over-enrolment" in the first year of schooling, with parents placing children in local schools because there are no other education facilities around, "knowing full well that these children will repeat Grade 1. So let's not exaggerate the figures," he says.
Yet the CEPD 2009 figures are consistent with those of previous years.
Of the 1 548 019 children who enrolled in the country's schools in 1997, 983 244 had dropped out before they were due to matriculate in 2008. Of the 1 676 273 who entered in 1995, 1 147 748, or 68 percent, never made it to their 2006 matric year.
Even if some pupils transferred into the private schooling system or repeated a year along the way, it still doesn't account for the exodus. So, an alarming number of pupils are performing poorly, and an even greater number are getting no education at all.
"And one can safely assume that those who never make it to matric will end up unemployed for the rest of their lives," says CEPD director Dr Martin Prew.
If the department was less defensive about the problem and acknowledged that it is critical, it could begin to identify when and why pupils are dropping out and tackle the issue.
Instead, billions of tax rands are thrown at the public education system, with little effect.
For the past few years, the largest chunk of the annual budget has been allocated to the Department of Education. Though it has since been split in two, Basic Education and Higher Education and Training are together expected to get the lion's share of public expenditure for a long time to come.
South Africa is recognised as one of the biggest spenders in the world on education - forking out about 5 percent of gross domestic product - yet it is also known as one of the poorest performers by international standards.
Professor of Education Crain Soudien sees it as human wastage, rather than a financial one, and believes the drop-out trends are one of the most "underexplored and underinvestigated problems in the education system".
Education expert Graeme Bloch is also worried: "It's a ticking time bomb. And it's an enormous amount of children not doing very much with their lives and who probably won't get a second chance without a basic education."
That the country has managed to absorb so many idle hands points to the "very resilient nature of our children and their optimistic outlook on life", Bloch adds. "Though that won't last."
Soudien argues that young people "are becoming disaffected with the education system and have the sense that school isn't going to provide a way into adulthood for them, so they drop out.
"But we have to stop beating about the bush and begin to look at the problem in a different way. It's the schools that are kicking them out because they are not responding to their needs and not addressing the growing levels of disaffection."
It's not only this year's drop-out rates that are consistent with other years.
The decline in the pass rates is also following the trend. In 2006, the pass rate was 66 6 percent. A year later it was down to 65.2 percent. In 2008, it was 62.5 percent, and this year it's at an all-time low of 60.6 percent. If the trend is to continue into 2011, the national pass rate then will be 56 percent.
Putting right a system that has gone so terribly wrong will take "about five or 10 years before we begin to get acceptable rates", according to Bloch's estimates, "but about 30 years to get a decent fix".
But by then, the dropouts from this generation will make up the majority of all middle-aged adults. Most of them will probably not have returned to education and will not know what it\'s like to have done a day's work.
"Because of the drop-out rates, today's youth are becoming syndromes of poverty, they're becoming trapped, and we need to examine the moral space we're creating before it goes any further," says Soudien.
Sunday Independent on January 10, 2010
This article was originally published on page 5 of
