6 January 2016
The South African Communist Party (SACP) in the Eastern Cape notes the outcomes of the grade 12 (Matric) exams of the class of 2015 as announced. The SACP is concerned about the unfortunate provincial decline from 65.4% in 2014 to 56.8% in 2015, after three years of consecutive upward movement.
We would like to congratulate all the learners who wrote the exams in the class of 2015 and in particular those who have passed. You have made us proud, we wish you well in your future endeavours.
To all those students who have stumbled due to many obstacles, the SACP says "Do not despair, stand up and dust yourselves; make use of all available opportunities for you to carry on with your education".
We would also like to also congratulate the teachers, particularly those working in quintile 1, 2 and 3 schools as they work under difficult conditions.
It is our firm view that these Matric results, like the previous ones, present to all of us the story of our education system, wherein the divide between the haves and have-nots is vivid. We should all look unto the Matric results beyond numbers and percentages and appreciate that we are speaking of people from different social backgrounds. We should move beyond seeing Matric results as a contest of who got better percentages than the others. This fixation with numbers has led us into pushing the ministry free from accounting for the children who were on Grade 1 in 2003, and allowed it to only account for those who have written Matric. In the current form the Matric results alone do not offer an effective tool to measure progress in basic schooling.
As the SACP, we would like to see greater focus in the education outcomes that is linked to the kind of citizens and country we are seeking to build as opposed to this number chasing game with no deliberate developmental plans linked
to curriculum objectives for progressive education system. In fact the outcomes call for the need to have a basic education system that is rooted in the foundation phase and meaningful training and support of educators. There must be specialisation and deliberate curriculum streams that are followed by various schools in provinces than the current situation where students focus on every subject.
We are calling upon all stakeholders in education to make more efforts geared at improving the quality, effectiveness, efficiency and the outcomes of teaching and learning. The parents should move closer to the education of their children, so as the entire community as education is a societal matter.
It is in this context that we are calling for more efforts in improving the schools infrastructure in the poor communities, ensuring the availability of fully functioning libraries, computer laboratories with internet to increase research capacity, enough educators, improved scholar nutrition, well-resourced and functioning laboratories, adequate scholar transport, etc. This will go a long way in ensuring that every child regardless of class or race receives equivalent and non-discriminatory prospect to success.
The working class schools between quintiles 1, 2 and 3 should be developed and highly equipped to meet the standard of the upper ranked schools between quintiles 4 and 5.
We call on the institutions of Higher Learning and Training to ensure that these students receive all the necessary support in enrolling. Parents must also encourage their children to enrol with the TVET Colleges for skills development; if we are to embark on massive skills development it would mean de-stigmatization of our TVET Colleges.
We, the SACP re-commit ourselves to working even harder with the people of the province to ensure that we receive better results in 2016 academic year. Let us all commit in making education a societal matter.
Issued by the SACP Eastern Cape.
Contact:
Siyabonga Mdodi
SACP Provincial Spokesperson
Mobile: +2783 358 8070
Office: +2740 635 1042/46
Fax: +2786 268 1281
Facebook: SACP Eastern Cape