An education expert from the University of Limpopo says the Basic Education Department needs to do more to improve the schooling system, to ensure that Limpopo matric results are comparable to the national pass rate. The national pass rate is what applies to students if they were to want to continue their higher education.
Limpopo is the worst performing province in the country and the only province that failed to reach a 70% mark in the 2021 matric results. Doctor Abbey Ngoepe says while he acknowledges the improvement in Mathematics and other gateway subjects, the system needs an urgent overhaul.
“There are some pockets of excellence and improvement when one disaggregates the results. But generally speaking, there’s still more that needs to be done on an urgent basis to turn the schools around, to ensure that they improve, they become sustainable in terms of improvement. They move towards a path of being learning organisations and they reach the national percentage pass norm when it comes to performance.”
Meanwhile, Ngoepe says he disagrees with Education MEC Polly Boshielo, who on Friday blamed the COVID-19 pandemic and social-ills for contributing to the poor matric results.
“I think if one looks at the issue of the COVID-19 pandemic, it hits the entire country and if one looks at the numbers or can go back to the number of the cases across the nine provinces, Limpopo was amongst the less affected provinces by COVID-19, comparatively speaking. I mean, people would argue that the other provinces may be because they’re in urban areas like how, but take a province like KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape. They are rural, if not more rural than Limpopo Province. But look where they are in terms of performance.”
