The Eastern Cape achieved its highest matric pass rate in over a decade in 2013, but major performance differences between fee and non-fee schools remains a cause for serious concern. According to Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga, the province’s 64.9% pass rate is still the worst in the country, despite an increase of 3.5% from 2012.
The Eastern Cape achieved its highest matric pass rate in over a decade in 2013, but major performance differences between fee and non-fee schools remains a cause for serious concern. According to Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga, the province’s 64.9% pass rate is still the worst in the country, despite an increase of 3.5% from 2012.
Chairman of education council Umalusi and Rhodes deputy vice chancellor Dr Sizwe Mabizela said a focus on the improvement in the pass rate masked "deep and worrying" inequalities in the education system.
"There are many schools that lack even the most basic infrastructure and necessities such as libraries, laboratories or even textbooks."
A 2013 report by Parliament's Basic Education Committee found that Eastern Cape no-fee schools have an average NSC (national senior certificate) pass rate of 56% while fee schools, representing quintiles 4 and 5 (previously advantaged public schools), generally enjoy a 70.8% pass rate.
According to the report, 11% of high schools were responsible for 70% of matric passes. 80% of schools in the Eastern Cape were technically dysfunctional.
The portfolio committee found that almost all Eastern Cape township or no-fee school (demarcated as quintile 1, 2 and 3) were under-resourced, had limited or non-existent facilities and had several empty or inappropriate teacher posts.
Five out of the six assessed schools went without appropriately qualified teachers or suffered from empty posts, most of which in the maths and science departments, and all six schools lacked some form of basic educational facility such as libraries, textbooks or even, in severe cases, running water or electricity.
Differences in resourcing and staff levels are most apparent between former model C schools (schools which used to be white only) and no-fee schools (most of which were previously disadvantaged during apartheid).
Mind the (education) gap
In Grahamstown, state-funded Ntsika Secondary School achieved a 2012 pass rate of 28.8% while fee-based Victoria Girls High School enjoy an annual regularity of 100%.
Schooling in Grahamstown can be seen as a microcosm of the situation in the Eastern Cape, where the problematic division between no-fee and fee-based education is stark and redress is often ineffective.
In Grahamstown this inequality is exacerbated by greater poverty divides and regular teacher strikes, resulting in no-fee secondary schools averaging a lower pass rate of 53.8% (20% lower than the national average in 2012). Fee secondary schools had a near-impeccable 97% pass rate (23% higher than the national average).
Learner-to-teacher ratios show a similar, possibly connected pattern . No-fee secondary schools classes on average had an additional 16 students per teacher compared to their fee counterparts.
Subject-based inequalities
Subject pass rates in the Eastern Cape's are also deeply asymmetrical.
Core subjects such as science and maths are crippled by average pass rates of 50.4% and 38.1% respectively. Specialist or arts subjects such as music and drama contribute pass rates of 96.8% and 99.6%.
No fee schools are plagued by the provincial shortage of science and maths teachers. Fee-based schools, due to larger expendable incomes, are able to head-hunt teachers for these positions.
No-fee schools lack the required funding to employ arts teachers, especially as these funds are apportioned to fulfilling core posts, maintaining basic facilities and providing food on school grounds.
According to 2012 data supplied by the Cacadu District Department of Education, only four out of 21 Grahamstown government secondary schools provide or are adequately staffed for one or more arts subjects.
Of these four schools, only one can be classified as a no-fee institution. This means that most of the higher pass rates for art subjects result from and contribute to fee-based education.
Principal of no-fee Ntsika Secondary School, Madeleine Schoeman, noted that despite funds being insufficient, increasing fees were not an option.
"Ntsika is in a very poor socio economic environment; there's 90% poverty in the area so we cannot rely on the community for financing. This cannot even be compared to my previous school."
Schoeman worked as principal of former model C school Victoria Girls High in Grahamstown for eight years. In 2011, she quit and moved Ntsika school, based in Grahamstown’s Joza townships.
She hopes to improve the level of education in lower quintile schooling.
Staff formulas blamed
According to Schoeman, the post provisioning model, a system which determines the number of annual teacher allocations at a given public school, presents a crucial impediment to equity in Eastern Cape education.
"The 2012 post establishment is severely to our disadvantage; it doesn't take cognisance of the curriculum needs or the compulsory subjects.
It only looks at the number of learners you have and based on that you get 29:1 ratio therefore you need so many teachers which assumes everyone is qualified to teach everything".
Despite redresses introduced by the Education Department to bolster resourcing and teachers in poorer quintiles, the model indirectly favors former model C and fee-based schools.
Arts subjects such as drama and music weigh in at 0.361 and 0.502 per student respectively. Core subjects such as maths and science only weigh in at 0.188.
This weighting system indirectly reinforces larger student to teacher ratios in no-fee schools which cannot afford the subjects. This hinders these schools' ability to function optimally.
Professor of Education at Rhodes University, Rob O’ Donoghue noted the importance of addressing the problem of Eastern Cape education as a multilayered phenomenon that begins with learners’ poor maths and reading competences required for sufficient learning – and then “the non-existent teachers to work with to produce better results."
"It is a layers and cycles type of problem that the Education Department is trying to uncover through research and begin to address through practical co-engagement,", said O’ Donoghue.
"It is the role of the state and us as citizens to formulate a coherent plan to determine how teacher are going to be distributed in a system that is struggling, that is uneven and that is unequal", said education activistNomalanga Mkhize, education activist.
Representatives from the Eastern Cape Department of Education could not be reached for comment prior to publication.
