GOOD Statement by Brett Herron ,
GOOD Secretary-General
13 January 2025
We congratulate all matriculants who put in the effort to pass their school leaving exams in 2024. We also congratulate their families, teachers and school communities. Together, they are contributing to the development of our people and country.
The improved pass rate of 87.3% is encouraging, as is the fact that all provinces showed an increase in their pass rate.
The group entered their high school education during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic and persevered through 2 years of lockdowns, working tirelessly to keep their education progress on track.
We extend our sympathies and regrets to those who did not pass their exams, the vast majority of whom attended poorly resourced schools in poor neighbourhoods. The state of inequality in our schools reflects broader societal inequality.
More than 70 years after the architect of apartheid, HF Verwoerd, asked, “What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice?”, the damage wrought by so-called Bantu Education remains far from being undone.
I. Upward of 40% of learners who started Grade One in 2013 had already left school before reaching matric with their peers last year.
II. Matric results from schools in previously whites-only suburbs remain significantly better than the results achieved by township schools. Even where township schools boast a healthy pass rate, relatively few of those matriculants qualify to study at a university.
III. Independent policy research and advocacy organization, the Centre for Development and Enterprise, has calculated that South Africa will enter the 2025 school year short of 46 000 teachers needed to maintain an effective teacher-pupil ratio.
IV. Compounding the teacher shortage is the Western Cape’s decision to terminate 2400 teacher posts this year, most of them in township schools (see Point II, above).
The much-hyped percentage of pass marks is therefore a singularly inaccurate measure of the health of our basic education system. The massive extent of youth unemployment further renders qualitative judgement of school outcomes impossible.
The GOOD Party calls on Government to place greater priority on basic education as THE basic building block of our developmental society. We must put more money into developing our children and, in a turgid economy, this implies taking money away from what should be lesser priorities, including from the largely unnecessary spending incurred by the provincial tier of government.
In addition, South Africa will not achieve its objectives by cutting education budgets while spending hundreds of millions of Rands on pomp, ceremony, PR, VIP security and business class travel.
We call on Government to remove provinces’ discretion to spend money obtained from the national fiscus for education on non-education items, which is what has led to the loss of the 2400 teachers in the Western Cape.
Media enquiries:
Brett Herron, GOOD: Secretary-General
Cell: 082 5183264
Email: bretth@forgood.org.za
Samantha Jackson, GOOD: Media Manager
Cell: 083 5509875
Email: samantha@forgood.org.za