S.Africa: Dumb and Dumber: Expect worse matric results — despite 30% pass marks – My Comments
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[I like it when I see things going backwards. Nice. Jan]
Don’t expect better matric results in 2021 than in 2020.
That is the message from several South African education experts who recently spoke to Rapport about the prospects for the class of 2021 to outperform the matrics of the year before.
In 2020, the overall matric pass rate was 76.2%, substantially lower than the previous year’s 81.3%. It was also worse than 2018’s 78.2%.
The education sector largely anticipated that drop, given the severe disruption of classrooms brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The education department repeatedly had to adjust the school calendar based on the trend in Covid-19 cases in the country in 2020.
Hard lockdowns and lost learning time forced many schools to move their classes to online platforms, but less privileged schools and pupils without access to computers or broadband connectivity were left behind.
The Department of Basic Education (DBE) has estimated that learners in disadvantaged communities lost a year’s worth of learning due to a lack of teaching contact time and rotational learning systems.
With school activities picking up again in 2021 due to less stringent lockdown measures and fewer disruptions at schools, many would perhaps have expected an improvement in results.
School covid
Classrooms in South Africa have been subjected to stringent sanitising protocols
But Basil Manuel, managing director of education union Naptosa, told Rapport he would be stunned if 2021’s matric pass rate was better than 2020 and said the best to hope for was a similar result.
Manuel explained several factors worsened the outlook for last year’s matrics.
Firstly, the majority of them would have been in Gr.11 in 2020, and many of these would not have caught up sufficiently to excel in their exams.
In addition, load-shedding during the end-of-year exam period in 2021 made matters difficult.
Manuel said the power cuts impacted the writing of exams and learners’ total studying time.
Jaco Deacon, chairperson of the school governing body organisation Fedsas, echoed Manuel’s assessment.
Deacon added he hoped the DBE would let itself be led by science in making decisions on school activities in the coming year.
The national matric results for learners in public schools are expected to be announced on 20 January 2021, a day after the Independent Education Board (IEB) will reveal results for learners in the private schools under its umbrella.
Despite the fourth wave of the Covid-19 infections in the country, the department is planning for a comparatively “normal” 2022 school calendar.
The year will see the reintroduction of the typical “staggered” open dates for both inland and coastal provinces, historically used to accommodate people travelling home from their holidays.
Inland schools are expected to open on 12 January 2022 and coastal schools on 19 January 2022.
Below are the official calendars for inland and coastal public schools in 2022.
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