We are now well into the matric exam period that impacts the lives of nearly one million young South Africans. As a parent, I wish them all the best of luck as they go through this gruelling period.

I write this article though not as a parent but as a policy maker and national leader. As the grade 12s have started writing their matric exams a question lingers: who examines the examiners? How should we as the public measure the performance of the Department of Basic Education after they have educated over one million leaders from grade 1 until they leave school?

That is an assessment we must not ignore and one that requires honesty and accurate scales. In our evaluation of student performance, we often skip that much-needed discussion at the most important moment that it must be had. We comb through the students’ performances with a fine-tooth comb without combing through the minister’s performance with an even finer tooth comb.

The minister of basic education has been in this role since 2009, making this her 13th group of matriculants. It is time she sits for her own robust assessment of performance.

We need honest metrics of assessment — the minister benchmarks her performance on the number of students who get a bachelor’s level degree pass. There are four categories of matric pass levels — bachelor’s degree pass, diploma pass, higher certificate pass and senior certificate. All these have different percentages one must score in certain subjects in order to attain them. The bachelor’s pass consists of the following: 50% in four higher credit subjects, 40% in your home language and 30% in two other languages.

The impression that is given is that one can get into university with this and that having 36.4% of students with this is a fair measure of how many of them are likely to get into university.

But a closer analysis of the data reveals that this bachelor’s pass is not as valuable as the minister would have us believe. Let us consider a hypothetical student “Angie Mabena” who studied maths, physical science, English, Zulu, geography, life orientation and life science and obtained the following marks. maths: 50%; physical science; 50%; geography 50%; life science 50%; life orientation: 50%; Sotho: 40%; and English 40%. Angie Mabena would be given a bachelor’s pass matric certificate, but would she be able to get a space at her favourite university, in this case, Wits?

Visit Daily Maverick’s home page for more news, analysis and investigations

Universities give spaces based on what is called an APS score — you need to get an equivalent or more than the minimum APS score to be offered a space in that programme. In our example, Angie obtained an APS score of 26. The minimum APS scores for a programme at Wits University per faculty are as follows: humanities: 35, engineering: 42, commerce: 42, science: 42. Angie Mabena would not be able to study at Wits despite being told by the education minister that she had obtained a bachelor’s degree matric pass.

The bachelor’s pass is not a valid measure of assessment of the performance of the minister. We must probe deeper; we must pick a critical basket of subjects that are vital to our national productivity and participation in the 4IR global economy. Those subjects are maths, physical science, English, economics, business studies and accounting.

We must further look at how students are performing at the 60% level and above. Students who get a 60% mark and above are more likely to do well in these subjects at higher education levels and are more likely to graduate with degrees that are market and industry relevant.

So, what is the performance of our grade 12s in maths? Last year 260,000 students wrote the maths exam but only 34,000 obtained a grade of 60% or better, representing only 13.1% of students who sat for the exam and only 4.6% of all full-time students enrolled for the 2021 matric exams. Only 22.8% of students who sat for the maths exam got over 50%.

When we have conversations about the performance of our Ministry of Basic Education, we need to get more robust in our assessment of their performance, they still do not disclose how students are performing in computer applications technology and in information technology, subjects that are very important to the digital economy and 4IR. They do not disclose essential statistical information such as the median mark in a particular subject, or the average mark per particular subject. They are playing the game of cherry-picking statistics to have large numbers to report on the day of results announcements.

Read on Daily Maverick: Service delivery protests are biggest threat to matric exams, say education officials

Let us paint a clear picture of the state of our education system, we pay a lot of money compared to other countries in Africa, but we are not getting bang for our buck. Until the picture is clear for the nation to fully appreciate the state of the crisis in our education system, we will not be able to hold anyone accountable for their failures and those failures will show up later.

I was listening to Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi who serves as the president of the Walter Sisulu University convocation. He made an interesting remark in a recent interview, namely that the graduates of WSU do not know how to communicate, and this is preventing them from being able to find employment.

This issue of basic communication comes about as a result of the failure of the basic education system to provide basic skills. It shows up in the global competitiveness rankings as well: South Africa is ranked 102nd out of 141 countries in the skills of our graduates, and 119th out of 141 in the quality of our vocational education.

These are the results of a failed basic education system.

When it comes to education we must “tell no lies and claim no easy victories” as Amilcar Cabral famously stated. DM