Matric results: Pass mark adjustment worrisome, warns expert

As more than 800,000 pupils receive their matric results on Friday, the time lost in school has led to increased upward mark adjustments this year.

Education analyst Phaphama Mnqandi said although the mark adjustments were not a new thing, the real worry was whether they reflected assisting pupils because the papers were of a very high standard, or if the pupils were too weak.

“My long-standing worry is that obviously our education system endorses people so it reduces chances of failure,” Mnqandi said.

“But at the core… we will have these problems because we have not fundamentally addressed illiteracy. Our literacy levels are very low. We need urgent response to that.”

IEB matric results

The Independent Examinations Board (IEB) had 21% of its marks adjusted “mainly upwards”, while 11% were adjusted “downwards”.

The department of basic education (DBE) marks which were adjusted “mainly upwards” were double that of the IEB at 42% while only 6% were adjusted “mainly downwards”.

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Umalusi spokesperson Dr Lucky Ditaunyane said of the 67 subjects presented for standardisation by the DBE, pupils’ actual mark or raw mark were accepted in 35 subjects.

“Generally, the reasons vary so if we look at the pupils from 2020 and compare it with 2021 in a certain subjects and see that they had performed badly, it could be because the question paper was too difficult for them. So there’s also analysis that’s done which we call the post-exam analysis,” he said.

“In other words we look at question papers and each item in the question paper, how the pupils performed in each item in the question paper then compare it with previous years, if it looks like the paper was more difficult previously or again it could be that there are issues with the paper in some cases, it could be that we are looking at a situation where the examiner and the moderator when they set a paper they were setting in a way that they were not aware it would be difficult.”

Matric results in rural areas

Ditaunyane said a question appropriate for pupils in urban areas may cause difficulty for a pupil in a rural environment.

“Based on some of those factors, we are looking at factors outside the pupils and pupils may fail to answer the questions based on the knowledge they have, so these are issues beyond the pupils’ control, and the paper is deemed to be difficult, then the marks would likely be adjusted upwards,” Ditaunyane said.

“If it was deemed to be slightly easy then it is possible that the marks would be adjusted downwards, but if the performance of the pupils is on par with the previous cohorts, then it’s likely that the marks will not be changed.”

Wayne Hugo, associate professor of Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said the schooling system lost about half of the teaching and learning year due to the Covid pandemic.

“The assessment system has to adjust to this reality in a pragmatic way, otherwise whole cohorts of pupils are marked forever with a failed matric or unable to access higher learning,” he said.

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“The matric marks still discriminate failures, passes, and distinctions, only this year it is doing it under exceptional circumstances.”

Hugo also said the whole education system still had to function and it did so by a flow model – where pupils from school become students in higher education institutions, which could not be blocked, stopped, or cut.

“The consequences of doing this for the system as a while would be catastrophic, so Umalusi has to make sure the flowing through happens,” he added.

“This does not mean all is happiness and light. There is a huge drop in actual learning and reaching baseline levels of cumulative knowledge building needed for higher education studies for professions and occupations and specialisations.

“But we are going to have to deal with this while still keeping the whole process moving through.”

– reitumetsem@citizen.co.za