In the glee of the limelight of having completed grade 12, it must never escape our minds that there are children who pull up against so much, at a young age, to be able to pass matric.
And some have failed. This is a group of children who need all of society’s support and guidance to advance on academics and career paths the same way as before they trip on the hurdle that matric had become.
In October, with the examination for the class of 2024 in full swing, seven children in a rural school in eMqhekezweni, outside Mthatha, were gang raped the whole night while studying in preparation for their final exams.
In fact, the incident occurred when some schools in the OR Tambo region in the Eastern Cape were under a grasp of extortionists, the notorious gangs who demanded protection fees from schools.
In Zakhele Primary School in KwaBhaca, the principal was killed inside the schoolyard. Further south from this school, another school principal got beaten for merely refusing to pay protection fee to the thugs.
Miles away from OR Tambo region, on the other side of town, a Simon’s Town Primary School pupil was made to walk more than 35km to Khayelitsha, because he had lost his bus ticket.
I’m citing these incidents because they are just a few misfortunes that pupils in public schools have to put up with and be expected to do well when matric results are announced. At least these caught the media’s attention for their peculiarity, otherwise, many more incidents did not.
The level of expectation on our children is overwhelming and can be a source of failure as it breeds pressure. This expectation never really takes into consideration what had happened to them during the course of the year.
There is a reality and context to matric results that all of us need to acknowledge. Schools are differently resourced, staffed and supported. But also, schools experience daily lives differently, depending on societies upon which they operate. This is a massive factor that is beyond the grasp of children who often and mostly sit for the matric exams.
As has happened and even happening now, the tendency among society is to greatly focus on the achievers in so much detail that they conspicuously condemn those who fail without saying a word.
This is a group of underachievers who, in the eyes of many and in the thrill of the moment, will go nowhere. Farther and further into the future we will forget about them, and through our silence and forgetfulness of their misfortune they will become failure.
Failing matric should be a source of encouragement for the children and not rejection. Some may not have done well in this examination despite being gifted academically, and that ought not to dim their fortunes and futures.
Writing an exam is like a football game where there will be a winner and a loser. Fail or pass is part of the game, and the real failure is failing to improve.
Government, through the department of basic education, has programmes like the matric rewrite that offer second chances at examinations.
Apart from these, government has made it possible to have another education route to success. As an immediate, one could enrol at any of the TVET colleges, where NSFAS funding is availed for one to acquire skill while advancing academically on a different path.
Much later in life, as a long term, there is recognition of prior learning, where one’s experience and skill are taken into consideration to career path and qualifications. The time is right that parents and society enforce the thinking of vuk’ uzenzele when these children are this young and when they believe they have failed.
- Feni chairs the National Council of Provinces’ Select Committee on Education, Sciences, and the Creative Industries in parliament.
Makhi Feni
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