The pass mark can be set at 0%, but the problems that we have in the schooling system will never go away. Even the 50% mark will not change anything.
Dear Mmusi Maimane,
My view is that your petition on changing the 30% pass mark to 50% is completely misdiagnosing the problem, and is also off the mark.
First and foremost, a 30% pass mark is just a possible or allowable lowest percentage that a student can get in order to be condoned/passed. It therefore has absolutely nothing to do with the performance of students or the high drop out rate in the education system.
Have you considered some serious issues such as:
- tuition in mother-tongue;
- poverty, hunger and living conditions;
- disrupted social infrastructure and broken families; and
- lack of physical infrastructure and apartheid continuities in black areas?
The pass mark can be set at 0%, but the problems that we have in the schooling system will never go away. Even the 50% mark will not change anything. Also, a 50% pass mark does not guarantee anything. Its attainment will not provide a solution to all the systematic challenges that the country faces today.
The point is, education is not a standalone matter but it should be considered alongside other elements, from socioeconomic conditions to the national psyche.
The campaign that you should be running must be on equal and fair access to education for all children, and a call for the removal of all barriers that prevent them to get education.
The debate about changing a lowest mark from 30% to 50% will come thereafter. At this point, it is also not as fundamental – please stop the upcoming fanfare about the high performers in matric, since it is absolutely unnecessary.
The country celebrates “winners” and cares less about the marginalised who are forced to drop out of school and or university. About a million kids get swallowed by “a big hole” in our education system on a yearly basis, and another lot vanish on hostile campuses.
Mr Maimane, you can use your influence to help locate these “missing” children.
Yours truly,
Siyabonga Hadebe
siyazi@yahoo.co.uk
I am calling for an end to the
announcement of matric results
based on the 30% standard.The impact of 30% based results
announcements is this:1. We inflate success metrics.
2. We mask the real state of our education system.
3. We entrench low expectations and stereotypes. pic.twitter.com/zPnudLDm7V— Mmusi Maimane (@MmusiMaimane) December 28, 2021
