Government is not hiding matric pass rate numbers, the critics are just ignoring them

With only a few days to go before the release of the matric results on 12 January, it’s that time of year for opinion pieces warning you not to be fooled by the matric pass rate or by the surrounding political theatre, where the government celebrates those who passed and the few who excelled, while hiding the awful truth about a deteriorating education system.

A recent example of this is the 2 January piece by Muhammad Coovadia in Daily Maverick. Coovadia’s piece – and there will be many more like it in the coming days – is full of wide-ranging and dramatic imagery (children walking long distances in the freezing winter into an educational furnace), extended metaphors (cracked walls, death certificates and tombstones, and of course the Titanic), and moral outrage (explicitly framing the government as “the oppressor” who must be stopped).

Read more: SA’s ‘education’ system is warehousing children, not educating them

But after all the dramatic language, one must ask: What are the specific claims being made, whether implicitly or explicitly, and do they hold up?

I can identify three main claims underpinning Coovadia’s article. But these are very much the same claims that others have made previously and that will predictably underpin many other matric results opinion pieces.

1. Education in South Africa is getting worse.
2. The government is hiding and twisting information about education outcomes.
3. The required standards have been lowered.

Let me deal with each of these in turn.

Claim 1: Education in SA is getting worse

When Coovadia uses words like “collapse” and metaphors like a sinking ship to describe the school system, the clear meaning is that education in South Africa has got worse. Yet his article has not a single piece of evidence to justify that assertion. Nor does Coovadia tell us when his pre-collapse era was – that time in our history when South Africans had better access to schooling, had higher rates of literacy, and were more likely to enter and complete university.

His article does present some statistics, but they are all from a single point in time. When he (correctly) refers to our poor level of performance in international assessments, he does not mention that we have significantly improved in these same assessments over the past two decades. When he reminds us of the dropout rate and those children who do not reach the matric examinations, he fails to describe the trend over time. In fact, for black South Africans born in the 1950s and 1960s, only one in 10 completed matric. By the early 2000s, that figure reached about four in 10. Today, about six in 10 complete secondary education.

We certainly have serious problems: dropout rates are still too high, for example, and Coovadia is absolutely correct to point to weak learning foundations (like reading) as a contributing factor.

But virtually all education system indicators have been moving in the right direction over time: the percentage of young children accessing Early Learning Programmes, the percentage of 7- to 15-year-olds attending school, the percentage of all young people who complete the National Senior Certificate or an equivalent qualification, the percentage of all youths who access and complete university degrees, the percentage of learners experiencing some form of violence at school... the list goes on.

I challenge readers this matric results season to ask themselves when reading an article: Is the author presenting statistics from two points in time, thus making a valid claim of decline?

Claim 2: The government is hiding and twisting information about education outcomes

Coovadia asserts that the matric pass rate is a statistic “polished to perfection”. What does this mean? It is an extremely simple statistic: the number who passed the NSC examinations in relation to the total number who wrote. Of course it doesn’t tell you how many children did not reach grade 12! For that you need to select another denominator, such as the 18-year-old population, or use household survey data to see what percentage of all young people successfully complete an NSC or equivalent qualification (It’s about 62% by the way). And you should be careful of comparing November NSC passes to Grade 1 enrolments due to the confounding influences of grade repetition and other factors.

Coovadia warns, without an example or explanation, that the government will pacify the public with “altered statistics”. I would be curious to know what exactly he has in mind here – it sounds like a serious allegation but there is no example or description of what he means.

For Coovadia, the matric results release is a “masquerade”. He argues that by celebrating those who pass and excel in matric, the department is “applauding the survivors while pretending the casualties do not count”.

On the contrary, instead of focusing only on the matric pass rate, the department has made great efforts in recent years to provide detailed statistics on a broader set of measures. Each year, section 2 of the NSC reports provides extensive research on the percentages of all young people who complete the NSC or equivalent, on measures of higher-level mathematics and science performance, and on our performance in international assessments of learning quality.

Similarly, for a number of years now, the NSC report has published an inclusive basket of matric indicators, which includes throughput rates and participation in mathematics. In fact, there is a wealth of information in the NSC reports, which matric results pundits would do well to read.

The speech given by Minister Siviwe Gwarube at last years’ matric results release dwelt extensively on school participation rates, the quality of foundational learning, our performance in international assessments, the issue of dropouts, and high-level matric passes before announcing the matric pass rate.

It is simply not true to claim that government is hiding a tragic reality behind one number, polished to perfection: the matric pass rate.

Claim 3: The required standards have been lowered

Lamenting the so-called 30% pass mark, Coovadia says: “The bar has not just been lowered; we have buried it underground and handed out shovels.” Behind the imaginative figurative language, I understand the plain meaning of this claim to be: the pass criteria have been lowered, and dramatically so.

As the department tirelessly explains, to obtain an NSC pass candidates must get at least 40% in their home language and two other subjects, and at least 30% for three other subjects, and must pass at least six out of their seven subjects.

Suddenly making the NSC pass criteria much stricter would be a very bad idea. Fortunately, sanity prevailed recently in Parliament where this proposal was debated and rejected.

But more importantly, the standards were never higher in the past. Certainly, it was never the case that candidates had to get at least 50% for all their subjects to pass matric. In fact, under the old Senior Certificate, it was possible to obtain a “Lower Grade Pass” by achieving 25% for a subject.

Myth

Unfounded claims that the “bar has been lowered” perpetuate the myth that standards were higher at some point in the past.

We certainly have major challenges and must work harder than ever to deliver better quality education for our children, but presenting a narrative of decline is misleading and does not contribute to an informed public discussion. Matric results analysts must do better. If we are serious about improvement, our critiques must be as rigorous as our aspirations. DM

Hubert Mathanzima Mweli is the Director-General for Basic Education in the Department of Basic Education.