The statement : “The true story of the protea and the harsh realities of schooling in South Africa ” appeared first on Equal Education.
#ClassOf2024 #MatricResults2024 #ProtectLearnerPotential
SUMMARY: Equal Education (EE) applauds the 2024 matric class for their 87% pass rate and resilience amid challenges, including COVID-19 disruptions and resource shortages. However, EE highlights systemic issues such as high dropout rates, inadequate infrastructure, austerity budgeting, and overcrowded schools, which disproportionately impact marginalized learners. EE calls for urgent reforms to strengthen foundational learning, improve school environments, and ensure equitable investment in education. Despite positive trends in pass rates and university eligibility, austerity measures and youth unemployment threaten long-term progress. EE urges government accountability and prioritization of education to create a system that empowers all learners to thrive. – read more below
Equal Education (EE) salutes the matric class of 2024 for achieving an outstanding 87% national pass rate and a 48% bachelor pass rate! This cohort navigated their schooling journey amid an ongoing education polycrisis and suffered COVID-19 disruptions in their early high school years. This unprecedented achievement is a testament to the hard work and time invested by all learners to reach this milestone, often in the face of significant challenges. The pass rate also reflects the relentless support offered to learners from parents and guardians, and the commitment of teachers who worked tirelessly to narrow learning gaps by implementing targeted recovery initiatives throughout the matric year.
Yesterday, EE used the announcement of the matric results as a platform to highlight the persisting crises in South Africa’s education system, which disproportionately burdens black and poor learners. This silent protest underscored the inappropriateness of Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube’s comments at the podium, where she compared the class of 2024 to the protea flower, and praised their ability to survive against all odds. Learners should not be forced to endure dangerous and undignified learning environments, rampant school violence, and ongoing resource shortages made worse by austerity budgeting and a lack of political urgency. By comparing this cohort to a flower designed to withstand adversity, Minister Gwarube attempts to normalise the failures of the education system under her leadership—failures that disproportionately affect the most vulnerable black and marginalised learners. Instead of unfairly demanding the utmost resilience from learners, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) and provincial education departments should do better to ensure that the system is adequately funded and capacitated to enable all learners to thrive.
So while we applaud the stellar results produced by the class of 2024, this moment also calls for a more nuanced interpretation of the matric results, and a sober reflection of the systemic challenges that continue to haunt learners throughout their school careers. In her matric results announcement, Minister Gwarube appropriately asserted that the health of the education system is not only measured by matric results, but instead by a comprehensive set of indicators that reflect its quality and equity.
Protecting the potential of all learners in the system
The traditional pass rate alone paints a limited and incomplete picture of the efficiency of the South African education system. This figure offers a mere snapshot of the performance of only those learners who wrote the matric exams in a particular year. In contrast, the throughput rate better demonstrates the extent to which the schooling system was successful in retaining and supporting a particular cohort throughout their basic education journey.
During the 2024 Matric Results Technical Briefing, Basic Education Director-General Mathanzima Mweli reported that a 60% throughput rate is classified as a ‘healthy’ throughput rate for middle-income countries. However, EE’s own calculation reveals that the Grade 2 throughput rate still falls below this benchmark at 56%, indicating that 44% of learners who entered Grade 2 in 2014 did not exit the system with their peers last year. Worryingly, EE’s analysis further reveals that although there are incremental improvements in the throughput rate in the Northern Cape, North West, and the Eastern Cape, this indicator has still not breached the halfway mark in these provinces.
In the absence of more detailed data, the throughput rate is admittedly crude given that it is sensitive to various factors including grade repetition rates and school-to-college movement rates, among others. In its 2023 NSC Technical Report, the DBE noted that it is pursuing a joint project with the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) that aims to merge data from schools and TVET colleges. EE is optimistic that this project will allow for a more accurate interpretation of the throughput rate, and improve synergy between the DBE and DHET in tracking the movement of learners.
Nevertheless, it would be remiss to ignore the fact that the throughput rate, as one indicator of the education system’s efficiency, can offer some important insight into learner dropout. EE does not claim that dropout accounts for all learners who do not reach matric within the stipulated timeframe, but urges the DBE to avoid continuing to gloss over the issue or reporting on it as somewhat peripheral to the overall narrative.
The 2023 General Household Survey Report revealed ‘poor performance’ as the main reason for individuals between the ages of 7 and 18 surveyed not attending any educational institution. EE has repeatedly urged education departments to invest in strengthening foundation phase learning and provide proactive retention support to all learners throughout their schooling to reduce dropout, and not only in matric. A weak foundation phase leaves learners ill-equipped to cope with the increasing demands of higher grades, leading to cumulative learning losses, and risks increased disengagement from school. As such, we welcome Minister Gwarube’s commitment to embark on an urgent strategic reorientation of the system towards strengthening foundational learning.
We also urge the DBE, in its urgent strategic reorientation of the system, to ensure that the learning environment is conducive to learner success. This includes ensuring that schools, particularly those within marginalised communities, have adequate and appropriate school infrastructure and that the scrapped Minimum Uniform Norms and Standards for School Infrastructure (school infrastructure law) deadlines are reinstated to urgently achieve this. The department must ensure that enough teachers are allocated to schools that need them most, particularly overcrowded schools, and that vacant posts are filled timeously instead of reducing thousands of teacher posts. Learners from schools like Matshipi Secondary School in Limpopo must be supported and not have to navigate lower grades without teachers and important learning materials like textbooks.
Quality of passes achieved
It is encouraging that the class of 2024 outperformed previous matric cohorts in terms of both the traditional pass rate and the number of bachelor passes produced. This trend is evident across all provinces and may indicate that various interventions are starting to bring about positive improvements in education delivery. This positive trend means that more and more learners are meeting the basic requirements to apply for undergraduate programmes at universities, and are afforded the opportunity to further their education.
The impressive improvements in key indicators of quality must be protected and sustained for all learners moving through the system.
Risking education gains and risking futures
It is deeply ironic that the same government celebrating the achievements of the class of 2024 is adamant about making economic and policy decisions that undermine the very factors that enable these successes.
Government’s stubborn commitment to austerity budgeting in particular has had detrimental effects on the education sector that threaten to reverse hard-won gains. Budget pressures have resulted in the Western Cape Education Department’s decision to retrench over 2 400 teachers, which are set to have serious consequences on class sizes that will ultimately affect academic performance in the province. Moreover, the same government celebrating the improvement in matric results of social grant beneficiaries cut the social grant budget by R21 billion rand in nominal terms for 2025. Government’s failures to invest in equal, quality education and to stimulate the economy to create jobs, has eroded the value of the matric certificate. The celebrations we confer to matriculants today are tinged with trepidation for tomorrow when we consider the staggering youth unemployment rate of 45.5%.
Conclusion
In celebrating the achievements of the class of 2024, and the resilience of South Africa’s learners, teachers, and communities, we must not be distracted from the systemic injustices and policy failures that force learners to succeed despite the odds, rather than because of the system’s support. Education is a fundamental right, not a test of endurance. Protecting and nurturing learner potential requires a transformative commitment from the DBE and government at large to prioritise equitable investment in education, foundational learning, and dignified schooling environments. South Africa’s future depends on an education system that does more than produce proteas; it must empower every learner to thrive and blossom, free from the constraints of inequality and neglect.
EE therefore reiterates its calls on the DBE and provincial education departments to:
urgently fix the school infrastructure law, by providing clear and reasonable deadlines; and
introduce binding school capacity norms that protect the right to education and afford learners dignified school environments that are safe, well-equipped, free from overcrowding, and conducive to a positive learning environment.
We further reiterate our call for national and provincial treasuries to:
ringfence the ‘children’s budget’ to ensure that the constitutional right to education is protected and ensure that education spending is especially protected against austerity, or ‘fiscal consolidation’ pressures; and
increase the budget for the wage bill so that more teachers and teaching assistants can be employed in our public schools.
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Ayanda Sishi-Wigzell, Communications Manager
Email: ayanda@equaleducation.org.za
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