The assessment found that rural and township pupils in grades 3 and 6 could not count and did not understand what they were being taught according to Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga. She was addressing delegates attending the National Teachers' Union annual conference in Empangeni.
She says that in African schools, research has proved that only about 41% of class time is used for teaching. This was one of the primary reasons that South Africa was battling to improve the quality of education in schools where enrolments have increased.
Motshekga says that at schools where teachers perform and spend their time in class teaching, the students do well but in others where the teachers are not in class, there are significant levels of under-performance.
She says that the national average performance in literacy is just 35% among grade 3 pupils. She points out that if pupils cannot write, they weren't being taught and "poverty has nothing to do with it because they're just not being taught".
She says the repeater rate - for students who have to repeat a year - was at five percent in other Southern African Development Community countries while in South Africa this figure was more than double that. Moreover, more than 30% of pupils leave school between grades 10 and 12, giving the country a high drop-out rate.
Read the Annual National Assessment Report.
Read the article on IOL.
