Matric results gloss over the dismal performance of our basic education system
WHEN Plato decried the rule of the masses and dismissed the system of politicians elected by popular vote as democracy, it was for a good reason. He made an infamous, but a true assertion when he claimed that “within Athenian democracy, ordinary people do not elect the wisest and ablest to offices of power, but they vote to the demagogues best versed in oration and rhetoric”.
He claimed that democracy is a danger. And that is due to excessive and unbounded freedom. He further argued that, “in a system in which everyone has a right to rule, all sorts of selfish people who care nothing for the people, but are only motivated by their own personal desires are able to attain power”. Socrates went further to argue that ruling is a craft, an art. As such it requires knowledge.
Two important questions should be confronted after 29 years of doing the same thing with similar results. The first is about the appalling matric results and the second is about the matric and post-school synchronisation of the calendar year. First let us discuss matric results and what in fact they actually do not mean.
The matric class of 2023 had their results out in January 2024. The nation celebrated an 82% pass rate. There is no doubt that those who passed should be congratulated, especially that they did so against some of the most tragic man-made conditions such as deep interruptions of power, which followed on two years of Covid-19. Glossing over the results and not confronting the dismal performance of our basic education system, however, has been part of our pastime.
We have been accustomed to mediocrity and matters of lack of delivery have been customary. No electricity, and yet still pay for its assumed presence in the rates bill.
Similarly, rail disappeared in front of our eyes and 50 million passenger volume vanished to fewer than 2 million. Road transport on our national system is a hazardous adventure with broken shock absorbers, a twisted wishbone, a leaking oil sump, wobbly and misaligned tyres of vehicles that ditched into a swimming pool-sized pothole.
All these life-threatening occurrences on our roads have been met with the end of life for many. This reminds me of the Molana story, who was seen by a friend fiercely looking for something under a lamp post at night.
His friend says: “Molana you seem to be searching for something?”
Molana confirms, “Yes, I am. I lost my coin.”
The friend says: “Where did you lose it, Molana?”
“I do not know,” Molana replies.
The friend curiously asks: “If you do not know where you lost your coin, as you say, why are you looking for it there?”
Molana replies: “This is where there is light.”
This is what is so unfaithful about the truth of our failing state. Our matric results represent Molana’s metaphor of “looking for it where there is light”. This we do even if we know pretty well it is not where we lost the coin. Where there is no light is where we do not see. And that which we do not see does not exist and matters not.
In reality, the age cohort adjusted completion rates for basic education is not what we see. It consists of the 1.1 million children that are born and deserving of the promise of democracy.
Unfortunately, half of them fail to be under the flash of a lamp post light. They are lost in the dark. They are not part of the denominator out of which the 82% pass rate is calculated. If included, the pass rate is far lower than 50%. This is what should worry us and keep us awake.
Each year South Africa dumps 50% of its cohort every 18 years back. We see these in our labour force survey, where the youth having been stashed away in the dark from even getting to matric, appear in the reserve army where they represent 75% of the unemployed.
Censuses of the population are time machines and bring about uncomfortable truths. Four such time machines and one smaller clock have constantly revealed Molana’s dilemma.
The 1996 census showed that the population that acquired post-matric education was 7%. The Statistician-General’s report on the Census of 2022 have shown that the journey of 26 years has added only a miserly 5 percentage points to the stock of post-school people in the population.
Former Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe once asked how can a stretch of 480km between Egypt and Jerusalem take the Israeli 40 years to traverse. This is the tragic progress of 26 years. A miserly 5 percentage points in 26 years added to 7%.
The nation has for far too long subjected itself to celebrate mediocrity and Rome continued to burn. Blacks have just achieved 9% stock of post-matric qualification in their population, while Indians are more than double the number at 20% and whites boasting 40%.
Moving on to the second blinker of the nation is the matric and post-matric calendar year. At least on the African continent, Europe and the US as well as wherever the two latter powers had authority on education, which includes Asia, the end of the basic education year is followed by at least an eight-month break before university studies resume.
South Africa is unique. There is only a month break.The results are out and, thereafter, is a mad rush for placement at varsity, seeking funding, accommodation and all.
While technology may ease the logistics, a break of eight months is still possibly the best to manage the flow of continuity from matric into post-school. The world does it. Our exceptionalism seems not to have rational limits.
DR PALI Lehohla is a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at Wits and a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former Statistician-General of South Africa.
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