[This article first appeared in the Mail & Guardian on the 10th of January and is available on their website here]

Although the matric exams are an important institution in South Africa, they should not be used as the primary indicator of school-system performance.

When speaking about the state of education in South Africa it is both conventional and convenient to talk about the matric pass rate. This figure is easy to understand; it is published every year in all national media – and it is very misleading.

Although the matric exams are an important institution in South Africa – notably because they are quality assured by an independent body, Umalusi – they should not be used as the primary indicator of school-system performance. Matric results provide useful information for those  who reach and write matric, but tell us nothing about the more than 500 000 pupils who started school in 2002 but never reached matric, let alone passed.

The tale of the matric results is a story half-told.

If we look at the matric class of 2013, there were 562 112 full-time candidates, of whom 439 779 passed, yielding a matric pass rate of 78.2%. But how many pupils were there to begin with? If we look at the 2013 grade 12 cohort, we see that there were as many as 1 111 858 pupils in grade two (in 2003), 1 094 189 in grade 10 (in 2011) – but only 562 112 in grade 12 (in 2013). What happened to the other 549 746 that never made it to matric? Most dropped out in grade 10 and 11.

Rather than calculate the matric pass rate as the number who pass matric divided by those who wrote matric (that is, 439 779 divided by 562 112), what would the 2013 figure be if we instead calculated the number who pass matric divided by those who started school 12 years earlier (439 779 divided by 1 111 858). I use grade two figures rather than grade one because grade two is a better indication of the true size of the cohort, given the excess repetition we have in grade one.

The calculation I am suggesting we do yields a truly shocking cohort matric pass rate: 40%! That is to say, of every 100 pupils who started school, only 51 made it to matric in 2013, 40 passed and 16 qualified to attend university.

This analysis shows how the normal way of calculating the pass rate, which as we know yielded 78.2%, shrouds the reality that half of the cohort never reached matric, let alone passed.

Discussing the matric pass rate without also mentioning that hundreds of thousands of pupils drop out in grades 10 and 11, and thus never make it to matric, is disingenuous, misleading and disregards those children marginalised by the schooling system.

Although I would like to celebrate with the pupils who passed their matric exams, I find myself asking: “Who is going to speak up for the 550 000 children who started school 12 years ago, but have been silently excluded because of drop out? Given that we have no reliable pre-matric exam, what educational qualification do these children have?” Absolutely nothing. They are the first ones to fill the ranks of the unemployed, leading to a staggering unemployment rate of 50% – twice the national average – among youth (those from 18 to 24 years old).

Relative to other developing countries, South Africa actually has a higher than average proportion of pupils entering upper secondary school and an average proportion entering the last grade (grade 12). Yet the proportion that successfully completes secondary school is well below average for similar developing countries.

In South Africa only 40% of a cohort will graduate from upper secondary school, compared with much higher figures in Turkey (53%), Brazil (67%) and Chile (72%). This also explains why South Africa has comparatively few youth who reach and complete post-school education. Fewer than 10% of youths in South Africa attain 15 years of education (completion of a three-year degree, for example), compared with at least 15% in Columbia and Peru and 24% in the Philippines and Egypt.

Similar findings have previously been published, and numerous researchers have provided convincing explanations for the South African dilemma, particularly the analyses of Stellenbosch University academic Martin Gustafsson. His research points to four major factors: the low quality of primary and secondary education, financial constraints, teenage pregnancy and the lack of vocational opportunities.

The department of basic education has already begun to implement policies aimed at addressing these problems. These include:

• Introducing an externally evaluated grade 9 exam over the next three years;

• Implementation of the standardised Annual National Assessments, which test grades one to six and nine in numeracy and literacy (introducing these assessments has been a truly historic achievement, even though they do still have many problems);

• Almost universal (99%) delivery of textbooks for this year;
• The creation, publication and distribution of workbooks to all schools; and
• Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga’s finalising late last year of sensible minimum norms and standards for school infrastructure and her wisely chosen phased-in approach for their implementation.

We often overlook these quiet achievements when we are confronted with the shocking and unrelenting statistics of abysmal underperformance. The foundations are being laid for improvement and progress, but much, much more needs to be done if we are to achieve even our least ambitious goals.

I think there are three main points that summarise the concerns identified here and point the way forward:

1. Placing excess attention on the matric pass rate is politically expedient, but educationally unsound; the real focus needs to be on the universal acquisition of basic skills in primary school and the quality of secondary schooling;
2. The lack of any trustworthy pre-matric qualification means that most youths have no widely recognised proof of their educational status; and
3. Pushing students through the schooling system in the absence of meaningful learning and external standardised assessments is detrimental to the students concerned and to the education system more generally.

We need to move beyond a single-minded and shortsighted focus on the matric pass rate and instead start focusing on the quality of primary and secondary schooling.

Looking more broadly, as we approach general elections this year, we can only hope that those in the corridors of power prioritise service delivery to the poor over patronage of the elite, accountability over cadre leniency and, perhaps most importantly, new and innovative ways of raising the quality of the teaching force. As research has shown time and again, no education system can exceed the quality of its teachers.

Nic Spaull is a researcher in the economics department at Stellenbosch University. His education-focused research can be found at nicspaull.com/research, and he can be followed on Twitter

The above table was calculated from the Census 2011 data (thanks Hendrik Van Broekhuizen for his supercross skills) and reflects the employment status of those aged 25-35 years old in 2011. From the table it’s clear that those with higher levels of education are more likely to participate, more likely to be employed, and less likely to be discouraged. Only 39% of those who do not obtain matric were employed compared to 82% of those with a degree. It’s important to remember that the vast majority of the youth do not have degrees. For every one 25-35 year old that had a degree there were 11 who did not even have a matric. Given that this is for the 25-35 year old cohort (as at 2011), it’s not clear what the picture will be for the matrics of 2013. What we do know is that there have been worsening labour market prospects for those with matric, combined with a situation where more and more youth have a matric certificate. Consequently, it is understandable that many South African universities are now supplementing the NSC results with NBT test results when determining who gets into what programs. To get into UCT Engineering, for example, the admission points from the NBTs and those from the NSC are weighted equally. Even a cursory glance at the media coverage of the 2013 matric results would lead one to think that the days of blind faith in the quality of the matric certificate are rapidly coming to an end.

Today the Mail & Guardian published an article I wrote for them on the issue of testing matric markers prior to appointment. I include the article verbatim below…

This should be going up on the RESEP website sometime today – just a summary of media coverage of my CDE report:

RESEP researcher’s education report receives media attention 

One of the perennial issues that arises when discussing South African education is our complex language policy. For those who aren’t from South Africa, we have 11 official languages – Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sesotho sa Leboa, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, and Xitsonga. What happens in South African schools is that children usually learn in their mother-tongue for the first three years (Grades 1-3) then switch to either English or Afrikaans in Grade 4 and continue with that language for the rest of their schooling career.  Although this is what government recommends, many parents choose to send their children to straight-for-English schools (i.e. English from day 1), and this is especially true for wealthier parents. This situation gives rise to a number of questions like when and how one should transition to English. Two friends (and colleagues) of mine have recently completed a Working Paper (“Estimating the impact of language of instruction in South African primary schools: A fixed effects approach“) which is well worth the read – methodologically interesting and highly policy-relevant, the very thing we need more of in South Africa. For those less interested in fixed effects and more inclined to scroll to their conclusions, you’re better off reading a Mail & Guardian article they wrote last week which I am going to include verbatim below because I think it is a truly excellent article! Enjoy the read…

(Update: Sara Muller provides a useful summary of some the qualitative research on language of learning and teaching in SA here – go check it out.)

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[The following article appeared in the Mail & Guardian on the 18th of October]

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Mother-tongue classrooms give a better boost to English study later – Stephen Taylor & Marisa Coetzee

What language should South African children be taught in? The ongoing debates about the language of instruction in schools evoke strong (and often emotional) responses, as has again been seen in the various contributions in the media during the past two weeks.However, these responses are seldom backed by evidence. A more scientific approach is required to address such an explosive topic and this week we released a working paper that we believe offers this.

English first?

First, though, some background. In his recent Percy Baneshik Memorial Lecture to the English Academy of South Africa, Professor Jonathan Jansen recommends the introduction of English as the language of instruction as early as possible (“Wrest power from English tyranny“, Mail & Guardian, October 4). As Jansen observes, many black parents recognise that English proficiency is important for successful participation in the economy, and therefore conclude that their children should be instructed in English. But this conclusion rests on a key assumption: “Instruction in English from as early as possible is the best way to become fluent in English.”

At first this seems like a fair assumption to make: Surely the earlier you start with English the better? Doesn’t practice make perfect?However, most linguistic theory doesn’t agree. Many linguists argue that when it comes to learning a second language it is crucial to first have a solid foundation in one’s first language. These theories predict that several years of mother-tongue instruction will lead to better second-language acquisition than being instructed in that second language from the first day of school. So education policymakers in countries with multiple home languages, such as South Africa, have a dilemma. The goal is to optimise educational outcomes, which include English fluency, mother-tongue fluency and skills in other subject areas, for pupils whose first language is not English but how does one best achieve this?

The choice is between English instruction from grade one or starting with mother-tongue instruction and transitioning to English as the language of instruction at a later grade. Although there is a lot of theory about this, there is very little empirical evidence on the causal impact of these alternative instructional models. As researchers focused on education in South Africa, we recently conducted a study that we believe provides some preliminary evidence on one important part of the language in education debate. We will describe our findings below.

Current policy

Because non-language subjects in the matric exam are available only in English or Afrikaans, schools with pupils who are neither Afrikaans- nor English-speaking must figure out when to begin using English (or in a minority of cases, Afrikaans) as the language of instruction. The current language in education policy encourages the use of mother-tongue instruction in the first three years of primary school followed by a switch to English or Afrikaans in grade four, but allows schools to make the final decisions.

Some schools choose to commence immediately with English as the language of instruction from grade one (these are sometimes referred to as “straight-for-English” schools). On the other hand, most schools choose to teach in the home language of the majority of the children in the school during grades one, two and three while they take either English or Afrikaans as a language subject to help them to prepare for the switch (we refer to these schools as mother-tongue schools).

About 60% of children in grade three learn in a language other than English or Afrikaans. By grade four, this proportion is only about 5%. Most children experience a transition from mother-tongue instruction to English instruction in grade four, something that by all reports is a difficult process. However, the suggestion that using English as the language of instruction from grade one would avoid this difficult transition is too good to be true. Learning, including language learning, begins well before children enter formal schooling. Therefore, a “straight-for-English” approach still involves a transition in a child’s language of learning, and children may be less well prepared for such a transition in grade one than in grade four. But these arguments only take us so far. What we need is rigorous evidence.

Comparing apples with apples

Measuring the impact of this language choice on the academic performance of children later in life is no simple task. First, schools that decide to teach in English are, on average, more likely to charge school fees, have smaller classes and have access to more resources than mother-tongue schools. Even more importantly, the quality of teachers, their English background and other aspects of school quality are typically stacked in favour of these “straight-for-English” schools. In addition, children who attend the “straight-for-English” schools are on average from richer households where they receive more academic support from better-educated parents or caregivers, are less likely to go to bed hungry, have fewer siblings with whom they need to share resources and are more frequently exposed to English on television and in the home. Both sets of factors – school quality as well as the home environment – have been shown by research to impact strongly on the academic performance of children. When we therefore observe that children in the “straight-for-English” schools perform much better than their peers in the home-language schools in both English and mathematics, it would be naive to conclude that this is primarily driven by the language of instruction. Rather, what is required is to separate out the effects of the various factors affecting academic performance. The real question is how much of the differences in performance is explained by children’s home circumstances, how much by a school’s quality and, lastly, how much by the language in which children are taught.

Evidence-based findings
In light of these challenges, and bearing in mind the need for evidence-based policy, we have released a working paper containing our research on this issue. We used data from the department of basic education’s “annual survey of schools” to identify the language of instruction in each grade in each school for the years 2007 to 2011. We also used test score data from the annual national assessments of 2012 for all children in grades one to six. Combining these data sets, we are able to separate the effects of overall school quality and home circumstances from the impact of language of instruction on the performance of children in a standardised English test written in grades four, five and six. The motivation for this study was to gain insight into the situation at the schools where this policy matters most. Therefore, our analysis was limited to the 9 000 or so primary schools that serve predominantly black children who come from the poorest households in South Africa.What we found is quite striking.

Among children in schools of a similar quality and coming from similar home backgrounds, those who were taught in their home language during the first three years of primary school performed better in the English test in grades four, five and six than children who were exposed to English as the language of instruction in grades one, two and three. The size of the difference is not inconsequential: it is equivalent to about a third of a year of additional learning for children who were instructed in their home language during grades one, two and three compared with their peers who were instructed only in English during that same period. This finding seems to be in line with the thinking of education specialists, who have for many years promoted the advantages of mother-tongue instruction in the early stages of children’s education.

What we can and cannot say
As with any study, our findings have their limitations. This research tells us the average effect of language of instruction in South African schools as things are currently being implemented. Advocates of both “straight-for-English” approaches and mother-tongue instruction envisage a carefully thought-through set of instructional practices implemented by high-quality teachers and supported by sufficient materials. However, we estimate the impact of the alternative models as they are being implemented currently, within specific contexts of schools, teachers and homes. Therefore, we cannot make deductions about what the impact would be if all teachers were able to speak English fluently and household poverty and gaps in school quality were eliminated from the South African landscape. We are therefore not making any conclusions regarding the impact of English instruction in a utopian version of reality where all policies are perfectly implemented, but rather looking at the school system that we do have.

Although our study confirms that the language of instruction is an important contributor to the academic performance of children, it is not the main contributor. Factors such as community- and home-level poverty, weak school functionality, weak instructional practices, inadequate teacher subject knowledge, and a need for greater accountability throughout the school system all represent much more severe constraints to achieving better education.

Our results are not directly informative for policy decisions regarding the extension of mother-tongue instruction beyond the grade three level. This policy decision would require additional research. Similarly, our study has no direct application to the language policy debates at the university level. It is important to recognise these limitations, because there are many policy issues and arguments that often get confused in South Africa’s language debates.

Our study provides preliminary evidence on one key aspect of the matter: as things are currently being implemented, the choice to use mother-tongue instruction as opposed to English instruction in grades one, two and three generally leads to better English learning in the long run.

Finally, although our study points to the value of the mother tongue as the language of instruction, it may well also be important to strengthen the teaching of English as a subject in the early grades to help to facilitate the transition to English in grade four, as the curriculum and assessment policy statements recommend.

In conclusion, our research indicates that, as far as we can tell from empirical analysis, the current language policy is on the right track. Given the practical realities of the South African education system, the policy to encourage the use of mother-tongue instruction in the foundation phase but still allow schools to make the final choice based on their specific circumstances seems to be beneficial. We believe these research findings to be an important starting point from which to take the language debate forward. In order to make headway on this important issue, we need to move beyond a discourse fuelled by ideology and emotions towards one informed by rigorous research. After all, evidence-based policy needs exactly that – evidence.

Dr Stephen Taylor works in the department of basic education and Marisa Coetzee is a researcher in the economics department at the University of Stellenbosch. They write here in their personal ­capacities as academic ­researchers. Their full academic paper is ­available at http://www.ekon.sun.ac.za/wpapers/2013/wp212013.

Yesterday the CDE released a 65-page report I wrote for them titled “South Africa’s Education Crisis: The Quality of Education in South Africa 1994-2011.” The graph above comes from the report and shows the large differences between the richest 20% of South Africa’s students and the average student in the Eastern Cape. Learning deficits grow as children move through the school system until they reach a zone of improbable progress where the possibility of passing matric is virtually non-existent. This is just one of about 10 topics that are covered in the report, some of the others are teacher content knowledge, inequality of educational opportunity, matric outcomes, youth unemployment, international rankings and policy suggestions. I include the first paragraph from the executive summary which provides an indication of the contents:

“The aim of this report is to provide an empirical overview of the quality of education in South Africa since the transition to democracy and, in doing so, comment on the state of the country’s education system. It will become increasingly clear that the weight of evidence supports the conclusion that there is an on-going crisis in South African education, and that the current system is failing the majority of South Africa’s youth. By using a variety of independently conducted assessments of pupil achievement the report shows that – with the exception of a wealthy minority – most South African pupils cannot read, write and compute at grade-appropriate levels, with large proportions being functionally illiterate and innumerate…While there have been some recent improvements in pupil outcomes, as well as some important policy innovations, the picture that emerges time and again is both dire and consistent: however one chooses to measure learner performance, and at whichever grade one chooses to test, the vast majority of South African pupils are significantly below where they should be in terms of the curriculum, and more generally, have not reached a host of normal numeracy and literacy milestones. As it stands, the South African education system is grossly inefficient, severely underperforming and egregiously unfair.”

 I wrote most of it last year, finished it up earlier this year and I’m very glad that it’s finally out. I think it’s a pretty good summary of our thinking on how the quality of education in South Africa has changed between 1994 and 2011 (at least as measured by assessments). I think the one thing I would add if I had to do it again is a more formalized discussion of accountability and capacity. I’ve subsequently written a paper for the IJR which should come out in 2014 where I flesh out the relationship between the two but it would’ve been nice to include it in this report as well. You can also look at this presentation for a brief snap-shot of that research.

If you know of anyone who may find the report interesting please do pass it along to them – the more the merrier! The first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have one, the second is correctly diagnosing its causes, and the last is correctly identifying the interventions necessary to deal with the causes and solve the problem. We’re currently at about stage 0.8.