Why South Africa’s Declining Maths Performance is a Worry | Education - SAPeople News

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 
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South Africa’s Department of Basic Education recently released the country’s National Senior Certificate results for the class of 2019 by Suellen Shay, Professor, University of Cape Town.

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These are commonly known as the “matric results” and they determine school-leavers’ admission and placement into tertiary level study. About 81.3% of those who wrote the matriculation exams passed. There has been much well-deserved celebration of this achievement of the highest post-apartheid national matric pass rate.

What the country is not hearing about from the Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, is the drop in performance in mathematics. It is one of the “gateway” subjects, subjects which are considered critical for the country’s economic growth and development...

Universities need to shoulder the blame 
Universities cannot absolve themselves of this national challenge. At the University of Cape Town data from the Courses Impeding Graduation project is being analysed to better understand incoming students’ challenges, specifically in courses like Mathematics 1.

In this course a worrying pattern of performance emerged. A minimum mark of 70% for maths in matric is needed to get into Mathematics 1 at the university. Based on several years of data, an average of 33% of students fail this course.

...Students who fail Mathematics 1 will inevitably take longer to complete their degree and are at higher risk of being excluded from the university.
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Source: SAPeople News