Limpopo Education authorities have praised the matric class of 2020 for achieving a 68.2% pass rate despite challenges pertaining to access to e-learning resources.
The province is ranked seventh nationally and recorded a 5% decline compared to 2019.
Seven Limpopo schools have also achieved a 0% pass rate in the 2020 senior certificate exams.
Concerns over decline in Limpopo matric results:
It was an unusually short event to give details into the 68.2% pass rate recorded by Limpopo learners as announced by Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga. There were less than 50 people in attendance and social distancing was the order of the day.
Education MEC Polly Boshielo honoured the province’s top achieving learners. Among them was Pearl Khosa from the PP Hlungwani Secondary, in Green Farm village, in Malamulele. She bagged seven distinctions and a 100% pass in Mathematics.
Khosa has her eyes set on becoming an Actuary. “I still can’t believe it’s happening. I mean I didn’t expect it, but I expected it. I mean I worked hard and the support that I received from my teachers, the principal, the school, my parents, my whole extended family helped a lot. This year, I am looking to study Actuarial Science at UCT. Well, I hope to excel. I’m gonna put in the same amount of time, maybe add a little in my studies and just focus so that I can get my degree and start working,” says Khosa.
Boshielo has praised the matric class of 2020 in the rural province for achieving a 68.2% pass rate despite challenges of access to online learning resources. She says more funds will be required for extra lessons to reduce the impact of COVID-19 at most schools.
“As a department, we will be investing our energies times and resources on closing the gaps that COVID-19 exposed in terms of our traditional ways of teaching and learning extra classes will require more funding given the COVID-19 pandemic that have stolen the teaching and learning time,” says Boshielo.
Limpopo is largely rural and fraught with accessibility challenges. With a raging pandemic, learners had to resort to e-learning – a luxury for many in the province. But against all odds, the province produced eleven of the best performers in the country.
0% pass rate
Boshielo, however, expressed disappointment that seven schools in the province recorded a 0% pass rate. She blames low enrolment, which leads to schools having low educator allocation and communities’ refusal for schools to be merged for the poor performance.
Boshielo says the affected schools had a combined enrolment of 73 Grade 12 learners.
“The small schools have proven to be costly to the system, unsustainable and not viable. We have reduced the number of 0% schools from nine in 2019 to seven in 2020. The following seven schools, which enrolled a combined total of 73 candidates have achieved a 0% pass rate due to educational non-viability,” says Boshielo.
Minister Angie Motshekga releases 2020 matric results
‘Consequence management’
Premier Stan Mathabatha has called for action against officials responsible for schools that performed poorly in matric
“In the past five years, this has been your performance. Can you tell me what has been your reason to continue keeping you in this position that will assist even in other regions and districts to realise that we must work here? So, I think this is now time for us to start with the so-called consequence management. MEC, you know, you look at these continuous zero-result schools, the reasons are all known to us, which says to us if we don’t act then we are complicit,” says Mathabatha.
Meanwhile, a group of disgruntled parents who have been protesting at the education department’s offices over the placement of learners since the beginning of the month handed over a memorandum of their grievances to Boshielo at the end of the ceremony.
She has committed to resolving the placement challenges by Friday.
Reflecting on challenges faced by learners with Prof. Moeketsi Letseka:
The post Seven Limpopo schools record 0% pass rate appeared first on SABC News – Breaking news, special reports, world, business, sport coverage of all South African current events. Africa’s news leader..
Read more here:: Latest South Africa News