The almost 230,000 matriculants who did not qualify for university admission and a further 137,000 who failed matric last year face very bleak job prospects.
This is the warning sounded by leading economists in light of the latest jobs data, which shows that 2.7-million of the 7.2-million people who were unemployed in the last quarter of 2020 had a matric.
As for the educational stats, more than 1-million pupils started grade 1 in 2009 but only 578,468 of them eventually wrote the matric exams last year, with 440,702 passing.
Experts have blamed this sharp drop on grade repetition and on pupils leaving school after grade 9 to study at one of SA’s 50 technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges.
“Education Series Volume VII: Children’s education and wellbeing in South Africa, 2018”, released by Stats SA on Thursday, says there was “a significant drop” in teenagers’ school attendance after they turned 15, which is the end of compulsory schooling.
“Compared to age 14, the percentage of non-attendance among 15-year-olds grew by more than half in the years 2014 to 2018.”
The report says the percentage of out-of-school children continued to increase with age, with 4.6% of 16-year-olds and 9.8% of 17-year-olds being out of school in 2018.
“Adolescents who quit the school system at age 14-17 leave with poor literacy and numeracy skills and with limited post-school options,” the report notes.
A snap survey by the Sunday Times found that 22 of the country’s 26 universities received more than 1.8-million applications for first-year places.
In all, 210,820 matrics qualified for admission to bachelor studies this year, but the 22 institutions have places for only 134,754 first-time students in total.
Among the universities that received the highest number of applications for the 2021 academic year are the University of the Western Cape, which received an increase of 50,000 applications — from 60,000 last year to 110,000 for this academic year.
The number of applications for first-year places at the University of Johannesburg also skyrocketed, from 190,000 for the 2020 academic year to 242,000 this year.
Stellenbosch University applications increased from 38,226 to 45,314 for 2021 and the Durban University of Technology went from 116,112 applications to 139,602. Wits University registered an increase of 2,657 applications, from 68,752 to 71,409.
Azar Jammine, chief economist of Econometrix, said the future for the hundreds of thousands of matrics who will not get into university or a TVET college looks bleak. “They are and will continue to face a jobs crisis and it’s going to get worse.”
He said that South Africans are “obsessed” with universities and degrees, whereas in countries such as Germany the emphasis is on teaching pupils to become plumbers and electricians.
Many of those who do have 12 or more years of education are also unemployable because the skills that they are able to offer the market do not match the market’s requirements.
— Professor Andre Roux
In SA, he said, “one of the problems is that the TVET colleges are not up to scratch”. Jammine said that educational outcomes are not producing the kind of results needed to get people jobs.
“Most of those who finish school and even those who go to university do not come out with skills that can be applied to add value to the economy.”
Dawie Roodt, chief economist at the Efficient Group, estimated that between 60% and 70% of the hundreds of thousands of matriculants who passed will not find a job this year.
“Without a doubt, a post-matric qualification gives you a much better chance of landing a job,” he said.
He advised the 137,766 pupils who failed matric to repeat grade 12 as they will have a very difficult time finding a job without matric.
Professor Andre Roux, head of the futures studies programmes at Stellenbosch University’s Business School, said large parts of the economically active population are “inadequately and inappropriately educated and trained”.
“Many of those who do have 12 or more years of education are also unemployable because the skills that they are able to offer the market do not match the market’s requirements.
“Someone with a master’s degree in prehistoric architecture might be highly qualified, but the job market is unlikely to attach any productive importance to that qualification.”
Meanwhile, maths experts have expressed concern at the drop in the subject’s pass rate, from 54.6% to 53.8%.
Marc Schäfer, a professor of mathematics education at Rhodes University, said only a small number of pupils study maths because “for many it has unfortunately become a very dreary and boring activity that requires far too much rote learning and mindless repetition of endless exercises”.
Only 233,315 candidates wrote maths last year.
“For many, maths has unfortunately lost its legitimacy as a subject of inspiration and excitement,” he said.
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