South Africa’s Council for Quality Assurance in General and Further Education and Training, Umalusi, on Wednesday
declared that 2015 matric results showed a drop compared to 2014.
The results will officially be released next week but Umalusi, the exams quality watchdog, has said the National Senior Certificate (NSC) Examination results were down compared to a year previously.
The NSC exams are administered by the Department Basic Education (DBE) which said in total, 674,232 full-time and 127,456 part-time candidates sat for the exams.
Umalusi council chairperson, Professor John Volmink, speaking at a media briefing in Pretoria to announce the council’s decision to approve the 2015 matric results, said there was a marked drop in performance.
According to Volmink, the performance of the progressed learners – the policy which prevents learners being retained in the same Phase for more than four years – was one of the key factors which had led to an increase in the failure rate in 2015.
This drop in results was most evident in high-environment subjects such as Accounting, Geography, History and Mathematical Literacy.
He said a total of 59 subjects had been presented for standardisation, and after moderation, raw marks were accepted for 29 of these subjects.
This represented 49% of the total subjects.
“Moderation with some upward shifts towards the average historical learner performance profile was effected on the remaining 30 of the subjects.”
By comparison in 2014, a total of 58 subjects were presented for standardisation of which raw marks were accepted for 35 subjects, representing 60.3% of the total subjects.
“Of the remaining 23 subjects, moderation with some upward shifts towards the average historical learner performance profile was effected on 13 of the subjects while moderation with some downward shifts towards the average historical learner performance profile was effected on 10 subjects.
“It is therefore clear that to warrant this year’s unprecedented set of adjustments, the learner performance in 2015 must have departed quite
significantly from the average historical learner performance profile.”
Volmink added: “Together with the DBE, we are in the process of identifying the possible causal factors that led to this performance and I am confident that the lessons that will be learnt in this process would put us in a better position to ensure that the class of 2016 would not be
disadvantaged in any way.”
According to Volmink, possible factors that may have affected the performance in 2015, included a Cohort change with there being a drastic increase of 124,105 in the enrollment of candidates in the class of 2015, of which over 66,088 were progressed learners (10% of the total cohort).
The Policy on Progression was implemented in 2013 to prevent learners being retained in the same Phase for more than four years.
In 2014 there was an estimated 30,000 progressed learners writing the NSC examination (only 5.5% of the cohort).
Volmink said that in an attempt to offset the possible negative impact on the 2015 NSC results that these learners may have, the DBE and the PEDs provided targeted support and interventions for the progressed learners at District and Provincial levels.
“However, our analysis based on the raw scores of the 2015 results demonstrates that the performance of progressed learners account for an increase in the failure rate of at most 3.5%.
“In most of the high-enrolment subjects the increased failure rate compared to 2014 exceeds 3.5%. In other words, if we exclude the progressed learners the class of 2015 still performed worse than the class of 2014.”
Volmink added: “The drop in performance is particularly pronounced in the following subjects: Accounting, Geography, History and Mathematical Literacy.
“The conclusion that can be drawn here is that while the performance of the progressed learners has led to an increase in the failure rate in 2015, it does not fully explain the drop in performance.”
A further factor, according to Volmink, may have been a greater number of “borderline candidates”. He said that in 2014, fewer learners were retained in Grade 11.
“This could mean that more borderline learners entered Grade 12 this year who together with the progressed learners, led to a weaker cohort.”
He added though that it was pleasing to see that a number of the progressed learners obtained a distinction pass in the gateway subjects.
“Having concluded that the performance of progressed learners was not the only contributing factor leading to the poorer performance of the class of 2015, it is maybe helpful to identify some other contributing factors.
“Cognitive Demand of the Papers: Generally, by design, the standard of the papers have improved and catered for more challenging questions as compared to 2014. It can be argued, however, that the standard of the question papers were too high this year. This may very well be the case.
“However, the reports from the DBE internal moderators as well as those from the Umalusi external moderators do not support this view. These reports all indicate that with single exceptions the papers were fair and set at the correct standard in accordance with the Subject Assessment Guidelines set by the DBE.”
However, Volmink added that Umalusi remained open to the possibility that the cognitive demand of the papers were a contributing factor to this year’s performance.
“It is for that reason that Umalusi must ensure that the standards of the papers are not dropped in order to improve the failure rate. The performance in the NSC across all the levels, is one of the most critical indicators of system improvement and we will not do ourselves any favours by lowering the bar.”
Volmink further praised the standard of marking, saying “the tolerance range of 2-3% for markers limited the wild fluctuations in marking that we saw in previous years”.
In a final declaration, Umalusi said: “Having studied all the evidence at hand on the management and conduct of the National Senior Certificate examinations administered by the Department of Basic Education, Umalusi is satisfied that nothing has compromised the integrity or credibility of the examinations process.
“Notwithstanding the areas of concern requiring improvement we are satisfied that the examinations on the whole were fair, valid and credible,” the body found.
“We commend DBE for running a successful and credible examinations process. Accordingly, we hereby approve the release of the results of the National Senior Certificate Examinations administered by the Department of Basic Education.”
– African News Agency (ANA)
