South Africa’s Gr 9 performance under scrutiny
Education expert Dr Godwin Khosa highlights challenges facing Gr 9 learners in South Africa and calls for assessment reform.
LIMPOPO – Dr Godwin Khosa, the founding chief executive officer of the National Education Collaboration Trust (NECT), a multi-stakeholder organisation that raises money for education, has warned that the country’s education system is contributing to poor national performance among Gr 9 learners.
Khosa, who is also a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg’s Faculty of Education, was speaking at a celebration ceremony for top-performing schools in the Shamavunga and Groot Letaba circuits, held on Thursday at Mphakane village.
He told attendees that poor Gr 9 performance was a national problem, not confined to the local area.
Gr 9 learners struggle with assessment changes
“Through the research that I have conducted so far, I can tell you that the explanation for this trend is that when learners progress to Gr 9 and 10, they are inadvertently subjected to different assessment methods that they are not used to,” he explained.
He said the problem arose because learners no longer write tests in the same way they did in primary school.
“Instead, they are suddenly faced with external examination papers, which come as a shock to them because they are used to writing internal examinations,” he said.
“Addressing that problem is to make sure that we use consistent assessment methods from the beginning,” he went on, suggesting that primary school learners should also be exposed to external exams.
“The second challenge that I want to raise is widespread among our circuit managers.
“Just like taxi drivers, when there is traffic, you see them driving on the side of the road.
“The same applies to our circuit managers. They have been conditioned to believe that to get better results, one needs to focus on matric or FET level, and that must be challenged,” he charged.
Education system, not individuals, to blame
He stressed that this was not a problem of individual circuit managers but of the country’s education system.
“If you plant two pawpaw trees and water one less and the other more, they will obviously grow differently,” which he said also applies to the attention given to high school learners.
Local schools excel despite national challenges
Meanwhile, the top-performing school between the two circuits was Zava High School, which achieved a 100% pass rate with 61.9% bachelor passes and 38 diploma passes.
“This strengthens their results; hence, we declare them number one between the two circuits,” explained the Groot Letaba Circuit manager, Abby Maswanganyi, adding that none of the schools had underperformed.
