Leave the Dr Education alone So the Afriforum, as it so often happens, has joined the chorus of those who say matric results are misleading because they arent based on the total number of pupils who started grade 1 twelve years ago. Using their baseline of just over a million of pupils in grade one 12 year ago, they are saying pass rate is actually 48%. For me they seem to expect education department to account for drop-out rate. I am no statistician but to wholly attribute the drop outs to the purview of the department is distortion, as it ignores other social dynamics at play in losing such a number of pupils. There are those who died or who left the country over a 12 year period. Contributory factors are beyond educational but are social too. My understanding is that matric pass is a defined tool to measure performance over a defined period, which is a year not a 12 year schooling cycle. Little I know about statistics is that you measure what want to measure. So average pass rate is based on pupils who wrote the examination paper not those who intended to write it. It even excludes those who may have registered for matric early in 2014 but didnt sit for the examinations at the end of last year. To use a 12-year cycle, would need another measure for a different outcome. That would be measuring a moving picture of an education system as a whole not matric as a once-off Matric is a terminative yardstick as it measures the exit not continuity. It would be a statistical distortion to take one year examination to establish a qualitative value of moving variables of 12 year- period. I get the feeling that sometimes some researchers become so idle with too much time that they end up poking holes on everything. It is them that should be doing research to help the department with the dynamics of drop-outs propensity like where drop outs are, how many, which province, the demographics etc. Dr. Angie Motshekga is Minister of Basic Education and not a Statistician General, we pay Pali Lehohla for that function.
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 18:23:58 +0000
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