The matriculants of 2006 will not have an option between higher or standard grade examination papers in their various subjects.
Deputy Education Minister Mosibudi Mangena told Independent Newspapers on Wednesday that these grades would be scrapped in line with the new curriculum statement.
He said differentiation between higher or standard examination papers disadvantaged some pupils and, in some cases, contributed to closing career paths.
"It is very difficult in practice to differentiate between standard and higher grade papers. It is up to the discretion of examiners how questions for a particular paper are structured," said Mangena. This meant that the question of whether a pupil who passed higher grade matric was in fact better than one who passed the same subject at the lower grade was academic.
He said the Education Department had also detected practices where schools and teachers actually chose grades (higher or standard) for pupils.
"Ideally, pupils are supposed to choose whether they want to do subjects in lower or higher grades. But we found that in some schools, the teachers decide. Some schools don't even offer higher grade at all. This then disadvantages pupils who, for example, would want to pursue medicine as a career," said Mangena.
He said those writing mathematics in 2006, for example, would have chosen after finishing general education and training (Grade 9) to pursue either mathematics or mathematical literacy.
The latter, explained Mangena, was a very simplified mathematics designed to help people cope with day-to-day calculations. "Mathematical literacy is not maths as you know it - it's structured in a way that makes sense of interest rates, water meter readings and such calculations," he said.
Negotiations were under way to find agreements between higher education institutions and the Education Department on the correct "interpretation of achievement". This was done to ensure that the 2006 matric class did not encounter difficulties when it reported for admission at universities in 2007.
Mangena said these changes were part of the new curriculum aimed at making education reflect the day-to-day lives of South Africans. Education Minister Kader Asmal had said that a defining feature of the new curriculum was that it set out what pupils were supposed to have achieved at certain points of their academic development.
He said a Grade 2 pupil, for example, would be expected to know how to count from, say, 25 to 50, which meant that if there was a pupil in Grade 3 who did not know how to count up to 50, he/she got there by default.
"It sets measurable achievements," said Asmal.
Despite some fears being expressed on Wednesday night that the move might lead to a lowering of standards, Unisa educationalist Professor Louis van Niekerk said: "I don't believe a matric examination of two hours is an accurate barometer with which to measure what 12 years' learning has achieved anyway. If we want to improve standards and levels of knowledge, we must start in the earlier grades - by matric it is too late."
Van Niekerk said more authentic ways of assessment should be found. Academically, South African pupils who went to study in countries like the United Kingdom and the United States were by and large comparable to their overseas counterparts, he added.
"I don't think we should be alarmist. Matric has largely become a rite of passage. We should concentrate on improving things earlier on; such as establishing a culture of reading."
He added that promoting reading was an issue which outcomes-based education was aiming to address.