Education authorities were disappointed with the KZN matric maths pass rate of 54%. Matric pupils ahead of their first exam. File Picture: Jacques Naude African News Agency (ANA).
Durban - The unsolvable maths question in last year’s matric exams may have contributed to the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education failing to improve its overall maths pass rate.
This is the view of the Education Department after it emerged that education authorities were disappointed with the KZN maths pass rate of 54%.
The department told The Mercury yesterday that the problem maths question in maths paper 2 led to the undermining the confidence of pupils in tackling the questions that followed. When it emerged that the question was problematic, its marks were not counted.
Head of Department Nathi Ngcobo said the department was pleased with the performance of pupils in maths literacy and physical science. However, they were not happy with maths.
“We did not drop but we also did not improve,” he said.
“In physical science we are at 77% and in maths literacy we are at 70%.”
Ngcobo said their statistics had shown that improvement in maths and physical science had been on par in the earlier terms, therefore there was concern with maths suddenly falling behind at the final hurdle.
“If you compare how this class of 2022 had performed during the trial exams as compared to the exams, they had performed far better. All indications were that this class was better than the previous classes (meaning the results should have improved).
“That (unsolvable) question was in the paper and the pupils would have attempted to answer. If they thought they had failed to solve simple questions, that would have undermined their confidence in answering the questions that followed. We raised that argument with Umalusi but we lost,” he said.
Ngcobo said they would meet their maths subject advisers to chart a way forward to improve the results.
He added while they were happy with the improvement in the overall pass rate for the subjects, they were concerned with the number of distinctions that had been achieved.
In maths literacy, the results of paper 1 were analysed and showed 18.3% of the candidates had not achieved (passed) and 0.9% had scored between 80 to 100% (distinctions).
For paper 2, it shows that 29.5% had not passed while 1.1% of the candidates had achieved 80-100%.
For maths paper 1, a total of 51.5% had not passed, 2.9% of the candidates obtained a mark between 70 and 79% while 1.1% obtained 80- 100%.
For paper 2, 60.3% had not passed while only 1.7% achieved between 70 and 79% and 0.8% achieved 80-100%.
In physical science paper 1, 22.1% had not passed, 5.8% obtained between 70 and 79% while 3.3% obtained between 80-100%.
In paper 2, 41.3% had not passed, while 2.8% achieved 70-79% and 1% achieved 80-100%.
Professor Labby Ramrathan from the School of Education Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said the department could be using the issue with the maths question as an excuse to explain why their results had not improved. He said there was little that could be done about the matter now.
He, however, said that confidence was a factor when writing exams and if a pupil felt they had not done well in a question, that might affect their performance in the following question.
He said for the department to know for certain if this was a factor, they would need to analyse how the pupils had fared in answering the questions that followed that question.
Speaking on the efforts to improve the results in general, he said pupils would need to invest a lot of personal study time to improve their results.
DA spokesperson on Education Dr Imran Keeka said maths was a crucial subject.
“We are going to study the detailed matric results to see exactly where the problems are, and make sure that we address them. We believe that a Strengthened Mathematics Strategy must
rapidly be introduced, which develops how we teach the content, and supports teachers to ensure that their learners succeed.
“Urgent steps must be taken to minimise or stop learning losses in mathematics in the early grades, so as to strengthen performance in later grades.
“KZN has demonstrated that there is the ability to improve maths marks and this can only be built on,” said Keeka.
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