Our Opinion

Failing our children

SO “Madiba’s Children” have finally matriculated, but their passing this educational rite of passage comes with mixed feelings this year.

The pupils of this matric year are referred to as “Madiba’s Children” because they are the first to have started school in a democratic South Africa. Their matric result can be viewed as a barometer of the policies that have been introduced in education since then.

The key policies were a school nutrition programme, a school building programme and, a campaign for effective learning and teaching and introducing a new curriculum.

So how effective have these policies been?

Well, today, 12 years on, nationally 66,5 percent of children passed their matric, so one might be tempted to say that those policies aimed at improving teaching have been successful. Also more children than ever before are writing this exam, a measure of the state’s school building programme.

But these numbers do not tell us the full story.

Consider the cornerstone school nutrition programme. In the Eastern Cape this newspaper has documented its dismal collapse. So it is fair to say that this policy has failed here.

What of the other policies in the education basket?

Yesterday’s results show that the Eastern Cape recorded a pass of 59,3 percent, up on last year’s rate of 56,7 percent.

While education officials trumpet the slight improvement, this is really not enough for us to be celebrating.

Here almost as many children failed the exam as passed it, which means that in the Eastern Cape this year there will be about 30000 young men and women with practically no hope of building a brighter future for themselves. That is a lot of people for an education system to have failed before we even begin to consider the quality of the pass achieved by most pupils here who did get through.

There is further cause for concern. The Eastern Cape’s pass rate keeps this province at, or very near to, the bottom of the class nationally. Consider, for example, that in Gauteng the pass rate was a far more respectable 78,35 percent. What has developed is a South Africa of two worlds.

In one, say in Gauteng, quality education, employment and opportunity abound. In the other, as in the Eastern Cape, they do not, condemning this province to a self-destructive cycle of failure and poverty.

Education has been regarded as a key part of the arsenal in defeating South Africa’s legacy of a divided society. Education is supposed to unite us in opportunity but in the Eastern Cape it has failed, condemning, in this year alone, nearly half of our candidates to a life in the ghettos.