Biting the bullet with education outcomes
10 January 2017
The triumphant announcement of the 2016 matric results by the Minister and Department of Basic Education has subsequently been tempered as the harsh searchlight of reality has dawned.
Opposition political parties, specialist education NGOs, business, journalists and the private sector have rightly raised questions about the pass rate of 72.5%, announced by Minister Angie Motshekga on 4 January 2016. The questions have been motivated not by cynicism nor by opportunism but a shared concern that our children deserve better two decades since the demise of racially separate education. The Preamble of our Constitution, powerfully captures the aspiration envisaged for all citizens but perhaps especially so for the “born frees”, when it proclaims a commitment to “Improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person”.
What should have been a source of great national pride in an education system for truly freeing the potential of young people to take their place in the country, the Continent and the world, is now sullied. We are currently grabbling with concepts and outcomes that require deliberation and frankness about whether we are failing our young people. Terms like “retained in the system”, “progression policy”, “standardisation process”, “teaching to the test” and “culling” amongst other terminology, permeate our conversations and our press coverage of matric results, none of which speaks to a happy end to 12 gruelling years of learning, teaching and sacrifice, often by the poorest of the poor in South Africa.
Education, like almost every other facet of life in South Africa, bears the scars of a highly unequal society. It was recognised, early in the negotiation process, that heavy investment in education was critical and should have the dual purpose of ensuring remedial action for years of neglect and under-development, together with plotting the way toward creating a system that will give real meaning to equal and quality education to all.