The Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Thursday that the quality of education in South Africa had hardly improved and that the figure of children who have dropped out of school was unacceptably high.
This comes after Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga released the Matric 2017 results, showing that 75.1 percent of students who wrote the National Senior Certificate examinations passed, a 2.6 percent improvement from 72.5 percent in 2016.
DA spokesperson on education, Nomsa Marchesi, said while the pass rate of 75.1 percent may seem satisfactory, Motshekga had not sufficiently addressed the ‘real’ pass rate, that is how many Grade 10s from two years ago have passed matric.
“Last year, 41 percent of the learners who had enrolled in Grade 10 in 2015 did not enroll for matric. Nearly half of Grade 10 learners are dropping out of or getting stuck in the system – delaying their entry into post-school education and the job market,” Marchesi said.
“The minister, however, does not see this as a crisis and has refused our requests for an investigation into this high dropout rate. The number of Grade 10s from 2015 who passed matric 2017 was only 37.3 percent. This is cause for serious concern, rather than celebration.”
Marchesi said that the schooling system was failing learners not just in matric, but long before they reach the final years of school.
She said that if the matric pass rate was to improve, Motshekga would have to address key problems facing her department, including teacher quality and availability, infrastructure, and the failure to deliver textbooks.
Marchesi said that the DA will fight to ensure that every child’s right to quality basic education is fulfilled.
“We challenge the DBE to deal with the problem of rising dropout rates with urgency and to root out the issues that lead to it. We can no longer allow our children to be robbed of the opportunity to improve their lives,” Marchesi said.
– African News Agency (ANA)
