Cape Town - The Portfolio Committee on Basic Education continues to shine the spotlight on the concerning uptake of critical subjects such as mathematics, with uptake in economic subjects including accounting also taking a dip.
While the majority of the 219 597 distinctions that were attained came from critical subjects the number of pupils who wrote the subjects was a concern.
About 108 631 pupils enrolled in 2021 for accounting compared to 107 239 in 2022.
Business studies showed a decline from 250 918 pupils enrolled in 2021 compared to 247 784 in 2022.
Economics showed a drop, with 143 728 pupils who enrolled in 2021 compared to 141 208 in 2022.
The DBE revealed this during a briefing to the Portfolio Committee on Basic Education this week.
The Northern Cape recorded the lowest percentage of maths participation, at 21.0% and achieved a 51.5% pass rate, this was followed by North West at 25.4% and a 59.9% pass rate. The Western Cape was third, with 25.9% while the pass rate was 67.9% which was the highest in the country.
Eastern Cape had the highest maths uptake at 44.9% but had the lowest pass rate at 46.1%.
Committee chairperson Bongiwe Mbinqo-Gigaba has called for the department to return and present again with the focus on how it will address the challenges of critical subjects.
“We congratulate DBE and Umalusi for all the work you have done to deliver the 80.1% pass rate, an improvement from the previous year. We also need to commend how the girls and particularly children from rural areas passed well. This means more resources must be placed in rural areas because we have seen our children there hungry for education.
“However we have noticed that there is still underperformance in mathematics which is a concern. We are proposing that the department returns and give us a separate presentation so that we can discuss this problem and how the department is hoping to improve this,” said Mbinqo-Gigaba.
She said if the performance of maths was declining instead of increasing then everyone needed to be worried.
“This is not to undermine the fact that pupils are performing well in other subjects but we pay attention to our critical subjects.”
DA MP Baxolile Nodada said: “The intention of us analysing the outcomes is based on wanting the best for the children.
“An assessment ... showing what countries were doing was recently done and we found that many countries have moved to an assessment process rather than an examinations outcome process.
I think it’s about time that maybe we have a blended method of assessment or a continuous assessment method to measure the professional knowledge and personal development of a child.
This may improve some of the uptake in maths and economics subjects so that we are more involved in knowledge rather than outcome based.”
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga acknowledged that while improvements have been made in the sector, there were still challenges.
Motshekga said while the intake in technical subjects improved, the figures were still not where they envisioned them to be.
“We will return back to the committee and give an update about the work we are doing nationally and also the work our provinces are doing to improve the number of pupils taking maths.
Also, see how we can recover the numbers for economics subjects.
We are seeing a huge drop in the uptake of accounting and these are subjects our country needs,” said Motshekga.
She expressed gratitude to teachers stating that they have been working hard with some going beyond their duty trying to make up for lost time.
“They have been ensuring there are no deficits from lower grades. Our action plans include ramping up and strengthening our Early Childhood Development (ECD), foundation phase and intermediate phase so that there is not much struggle when children reach the Further Education and Training (FET) phase. The foundation needs to be solid because as it is now, there must be after-school and Saturday classes,” she said.
DBE chief director for public examinations and national assessments, Dr Rufus Poliah said: “There are a number of areas to improve on and we will embark on that. We are constantly under criticism that we are setting the bar extremely low so let me emphasise that no pupil will be able to attain a National Senior Certificate (NSC) if he obtains 30 % in all 7 subjects, 30% is the minimum requirement.”
Cape Times