Quantity over quality? SA schools pass rate improves to highest level since end of apartheid

Of the 790,405 learners who sat for the exams late in 2019, 81.3% passed, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said on Tuesday at an event in Midrand, north of Johannesburg. That compares with a rate of 78.2% in the previous year.

While the official figure has increased significantly over the past 10 years, the quality of South Africa's education system continues to lag. It was placed 114th out of 137 countries by the World Economic Forum in 2017, the last time the organisation published a ranking for the quality of schooling in its Global Competitiveness Index. That's behind the Democratic Republic of Congo, Georgia and Turkey.

South Africa spends about 14% of its budget on primary and secondary education, more than on any other expenditure item, but the poor quality continues to constrain an economy in which almost 30% of the labour force is unemployed.

Less than 40% of the learners enrolled for grade 10 in 2017 wrote and passed the final-year exams in 2019, the Democratic Alliance, the biggest opposition party, said in an emailed statement. "The slow poison of drop-out rates between grades 10 and 12 is eating away at the future of the youth of this country."

No skills

The country's basic education system has poorer outcomes than that of its peers that spend less on schooling on a per capita basis, according to the International Monetary Fund. The system is held back by a lack of knowledge among educators and uneven availability of textbooks, while unions "fervently resist any policy to monitor teachers by blocking accountability reforms," the lender said in a report last year.

The poor quality of education means school-leavers aren't equipped with the skills needed to participate in a modern economy, said Dawie Roodt, chief economist at the Efficient Group. The best employment prospects for students who aren't eligible to go to university are in primary industries, whereas growth is really occurring in the tertiary sector, such as consumer and financial services, he said.

The jobless rate for those who have passed final-year exams, known locally as matric, is 29.8% compared with 34.4% for those without the qualification, data from Statistics South Africa show.

The pass rate for the 12,595 private school learners who wrote exams set by the Independent Examinations Board is 98.8% compared with 98.9% in 2018.