At this time of year, South African “matriculants” reflect on their successes or failures. For those unfamiliar with the term, it indicates persons who would now be allowed to enter university or you can say that they graduated from high school. While the correct use of the term would reflect that a person would now qualify to attend university, the term is loosely used just to indicate that a person finished high school.

Much is said about the performances of some individuals who obtained distinctions in up to twelve subjects. Newspapers are filled with articles about these learners and their accomplishments. This creates the impression that students are performing much better than they had in the past. To see this in perspective, however, we need to look at a number of aspects that would influence the results.



A Short History:
Firstly there is the fact that the education system in the past did not make provision for learners to take on extra subjects. Schools had a fixed curriculum and the students were only allowed to take six subjects. In extreme cases, where the interest of the student was of such a nature, he/she would be allowed to study an additional subject, with the understanding that the additional subject would indeed contribute to the education of the learner. The first external subject offered was computer studies and this subject was initially presented at external colleges or universities. This meant that most of the students that actually obtained seven distinctions had computer studies as an additional subject. This meant that it was a real accomplishment if a person got seven or eight distinctions, based more on the fact that it was difficult to obtain distinctions in the “normal” school subjects. (We also took it as a given that a person that studied computer science would obtain a distinction in that subject as it was less challenging than the compulsory subjects)

Then at some point, with the start of the new education system, schools started to offer extra subjects, most of these subjects were additional subjects with obscure names and of little value. Most of these subjects would be seen as fillers, which only occupy the time of the student and guarantee an additional distinction or two. Why would I say that? The answer is easy. Most of the students that take these additional subjects obtain distinctions in them in the first place. This already indicates that the students do not find the subject challenging in any way. It is an easy way to look good when you can add an extra few distinctions to your matriculation certificate.

At his point I made it look a bit one-sided and as if could sound bitter for a specific purpose. It is to point out the sad reality that the matriculation results are in fact much worse than one would want to believe from the figures presented. To look at the real picture, we need to look at comparative data and not data presented in isolation. For this purpose we can use the data as presented by the “Trends in International
Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), 2003”. where South Africa came last out of 41 countries that were compared in this study. This corresponds with the fact that as more individuals obtain distinctions in their exam results, the more South Africa falls behind in the international comparative scores. A clear link that we refuse to see. The more we artificially adjust the results in order to look better, the more we fall behind. We have to ask ourselves this question. Is it in the interest of the youth to reduce the standard of education, just so that a government department can look good on the surface?

Luckily the universities appear to understand the situation and the problems. A number of these universities therefore refuse to lower their standards just to please a few corrupt officials. It is for this reason that some students that obtained up to as much as eight distinctions are refused entrance into certain courses at university. In the past this situation would be unheard of, but the fact remains that the quality of education is now at such a low standard, that universities have to re-test students to determine whether they should be allowed to study in a specific field. If the universities do not trust the quality of education at school level, should we as employers trust the quality of that education?

This is the sad reality of the South African education system. While it appears to look good on the surface when we look at the matriculation results and the number of distinctions obtained, our education system, specifically at the primary and secondary levels are falling apart. The “Matric Certificate” is now just a worthless piece of paper with less value than the Zimbabwean dollar.