WHO SHOULD TAKE THE BLAME FOR FAILING MATRICS?

 

Year in and year out, matric students who don’t do well in their final matric exams have been subjected to the pressure of taking the blame for the fall. This has increased in a number of students opting to take their lives from the pressure they receive from friends, family, higher education institutions and members of the society. This doesn’t overlook the responsibility and accountability the matric students are expected to take charge, it is their future and responsibility to ensure readiness and competence throughout.

The Department of Education in partnership with UMalusi the (quality assurance body of the education system) have been caught in unpopular grounds of low standards delivery. There shouldn’t be any exceptions with regards to compromising the standards of our education because of the impact it has in the performance of the affected students. Sadly, the students who have become yearly victims to the negligence of the governing bodies of education come from poor rural areas and urban townships. We have experienced several incidents over the years of shortage of books, lack of adequate school buildings, abusive teachers, low resourced study material for specialised subjects, lack of quality teachers in specialised subjects, leaking of exam papers and long distance travel of students to schools. Both the Department of Education and its partnership have been made aware of these occurring problematic issues and yet nothing has changed as we experience the same every year.

In the act of adopting high quality standards, basic education and secondary education should walk together the journey from the start. There seems to be a high demand of success in the matric final exam which expose unjust pressure to students who have been failed by the department in the lower phase of their education. The department ignores much of the basic education phases and only appear to be part of the final stages in their exit phase ready to take success credit while dumping all failures to students. The department of Education officials work harder in answering questions of the media and getting prepared to neutralize criticism to look good and leaving the real problems unattended. It would be safe to say for the most part, what reflects in the matric results is the overall commitment invested by the Department of Education from basic to secondary phase.  No student can waste their 12 years of schooling only to become a failure in grade 12, something in between their studies must have been ignored whether in the basic phase or secondary phase.

The Department of Education and its partnership must stop the hum of excuses and roll-up their sleeves to fix the problem. The frequently affected schools by the ignorance of the education governing bodies experience the attention only on the basis of major incidents discovered by the media, and this calls for embarrassment. For all students who have managed to stay school up to matric, that student is able enough to go through. The Department of Education and UMalusi must stop playing cat and mouse with the media, the future of this country depends on the quality, commitment and attention given to our education system in all its phases and geographical location of our schools.

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