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The Eastern Cape education department leadership this week read the riot act to principals of underperforming schools in the province.
By doing so, the officials hope that this will turn the situation around and improve this year’s matric results by the time the classes sit for their final exams in two months time, the education bosses said.
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On Monday, the acting head of department, Soyisile Nuku, met the principals from 82 high schools around the province in Mthatha where he told them to get their act together.
The province's matric have been steadily improving over the last few years and Nuku wants to keep it that way, and for the high schools to do even better. Last year’s matric pass rate jumped from 73% to 77%. The province has also managed to shake off the tag of always being at the bottom of the country's results and Nuku wants more hard work from the principals.
He said he was doing the exercise to be able to account to his own bosses about what he has done to intervene to improve the results. Nuku said the meeting was about the principals heeding management's calls and taking tips to improve the results.
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He said part of that was to motivate the pupils to take extra classes starting this week until the end of their exams. He said he was relieved that there were no longer schools that performed at a zero percent pass rate. Nuku said:
He however acknowledged that some of the schools were better off now, when analysing their results in the first two quarters of this year. He said this was giving the department hope that some of the 82 schools were getting out of the underperformance category.
Nuku said the quality of leadership at the schools also determined the performance of the pupils and that the quality of those coming from primary schools also determined the results. He said human and material resources were also important in determining the pupils' performance.
“The big thing to me is that if our communities really assist the department to expedite the issue of schools rationalisation and realignment of schools, it is a recipe of taking all these small schools out of this quagmire of underperformance,” he said.
He said although at the moment they were concentrating on Grade 12s, the underperformance was however across the whole system.
Deputy director-general Ray Tywakadi, head of curriculum in the province, said that given their target of an 80% pass rate they cannot afford to rest on their laurels. “We are moving towards our targets of an 80% pass. The majority of our schools are almost 70% pass. So, if we can manage that grouping which is averaging 70% and above, the job will be done,” he said.
