JONATHAN JANSEN | Abolishing 30% pass mark is wrong vehicle for achieving a noble goal

The BMW M5 hybrid model (2025) goes from 0-100km/h in 3.5 seconds. Asking that my beloved 1976 VW Beetle achieves the same acceleration in less than a day is the kind of fantasy that keep comedians in business.

That is why the Build One South Africa proposal in parliament this week to abolish the 30% pass mark in high schools is the wrong vehicle for achieving a noble goal. My friend Mmusi Maimane needs to get off this high horse and saddle another one.

Having taught high school physical science in the past 22 months, I can tell you that three-quarters of my Grade 10 class would fail if the pass mark was set at 50%. I worked really hard in preparation for every class. On average, I did seven hours of preparation for a 50-minute lesson; the content is easy, but I had to make this digestible for 14-15 year-olds and that takes a lot of thinking time. I have a BSc (science) degree with physics, chemistry and mathematics as starting subjects, more than enough to teach at this grade level; I am a life sciences major.

The pupils worked day and night, not sleeping the night before the final chemistry exam last month. They would often stay until 5pm in the afternoon as we taught them. They were exposed to chemistry practicals in UCT laboratories and physics experiments at Stellenbosch University labs. There was no lack of exposure to the physical sciences, whether learning the physics of navigation in a Safmarine simulator in Simonstown or the principle of the cable car in the engine room below Table Mountain.

These children are smart, dedicated and determined to pass. They are, however, also products of a school system that failed them since the foundation years in primary school.

What does this mean? That you cannot fix the basic problems of the school system by tinkering with the 30% pass rate in high schools. I admit, this is good politics because the public knows the dire state of education in South Africa and that the annual celebration of NSC (matric) performance is just that — political performance. But the 30% sing-song is also badly misinformed strategy if what we really want to do is lift the quality of the school system.

What Bosa should do is refocus their political strategy on the low levels of achievement in literacy and numeracy in the foundation years and of science and mathematics in the senior phase of primary school and the first years of high school.

Put bluntly, the 30% argument at the end of high school amounts to cheap political shots; refocusing those energies in the early years of schooling would show that a political party is serious about developing a world class system from the ground up. In other words, Bosa should not play on the terrain of the ruling party for then both groups look foolish in their efforts to fix South Africa’s ailing school system.

I was shocked in a Cyrillian (yes, our president) way to find that I could not assume in the senior phase of high school that my physics class had enough knowledge with respect to the basics of the periodic table such as the atomic number and neutrons or alkaline earth metals and electronegativity.

This had to be re-taught since foundational knowledge was weak. What this means that in a crowded Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (Caps) curriculum I had to keep going back to recover lost knowledge before I could move forward with new knowledge. I had to choose between competence and coverage, a problem familiar to practicing teachers today.

There are political ideals and there is the reality of our classrooms. We need to get these two things to meet and the way to do that is not idle rhetoric but a clearer understanding of why the school system is in trouble in the first place.

—  Prof Jonathan Jansen

The problem was that the more I went backwards, the more time I lost consolidating the new knowledge ahead of tests and examinations. This week, in one of my research projects with 12 professors of education going back to school, an accomplished historian of education at UCT said this of her experience teaching the subject after many years: I had never been so relieved to get 30% in my class. Imagine that.

There are political ideals and there is the reality of our classrooms. We need to get these two things to meet and the way to do that is not idle rhetoric but a clearer understanding of why the school system is in trouble in the first place. A political reformer of the South African school system could do the following.

Set high standards for literacy and numeracy in the foundation years and ensure there is the capacity among teachers to do this within a short period of time. This could mean that every child must pass with 50% within a three-year period. Pour resources into this initiative including the retraining of foundation phase teachers and include the reception year educators. Celebrate achievement in the national spotlight diverting resources from the vacuous matric fest at the other end of the school pipeline.

Then, maybe then, I might believe in the potential of my imaginary VW beetle again.