Shocked by the sharp decline in his school's matric pass rate, the principal of Grahamstown's Nombulelo Senior Secondary School warns that there could be worse to come.
Shocked by the sharp decline in his school's matric pass rate, the principal of Grahamstown's Nombulelo Senior Secondary School warns that there could be worse to come.
The school is one of the city's two biggest and principal Mthuthuzeli Koliti says their disastrous pass rate – down from 64.7% in 2012 to 39.1% last year – is partly a symptom of what he describes as a "huge explosion waiting to happen".
His school reflects a rapidly growing number of dysfunctional homes across the country, Koliti says.
"We have more than 600 children who depend on social grants – some of them orphaned – and that affects their performance at school.”
Nombulelo is traditionally regarded as a strong-performing school.
In a frank interview with Grocott's Mail on Thursday 9 January, Koliti said they had expected a low aggregate in their 2013 results, but hadn't thought it would be lower than 50%. He said the school realised last March that their Grade 12s were not properly prepared for matric.
“We realised that some of them were not supposed to have passed Grade 11, and we suspected that there were mistakes in their results. You know, sometimes marks are captured incorrectly,” said Koliti.
Of the large contingent of 215 Nombulelo Matrics who sat for their exams in 2013 – almost double the 116 candidates who wrote in 2012 – just 84 passed.
He said he was "depressed" at the results.
“We knew that we were not going to get good results, but we did not expect them to be this low… this is embarrassing.”
He said the results were poor despite strong support for the pupils.
“This group was different from the other groups we have had. We tried to support them and called in parents to intervene. Teachers did their jobs, but it seems it did not work,” Koliti said.
He was at pains to emphasise that this was not an excuse.
“I am not trying to hide behind these reasons, but I think they are important to mention."
As in the rest of the country, dysfunctional homes add to the picture of decline, Koliti said.
"This badly affects their performance at school,” he said.
Koliti said another of their challenges had been that four of their matrics fell pregnant during the year. Only one of them had passed.
“It is not like there is no support from the school to teach them how to deal with issues of adolescence. We even have learner support agents who go to their homes and find out how they are coping," Koliti said. "The schools do enough but it also depends on what happens at home.”
Koliti was more hopeful about the school's 2014 matrics. He said the 92 pupils who had passed Grade 11 were ready to tackle matric.
“Unless they get lazy, we are very confident that they are ready. This year we are hoping to get a pass rate of 70-80%.”
