Beyond Matric Results: Reconfiguring education pathways for future – SABC News

By Prof Kat Yassim

 As the streets and surrounds fill with the celebratory sounds of a historic moment – the 87.3% pass rate of the Matric class of 2024 – it is with some sadness that some of us know how short-lived this will be. This is not in any way intended to mar the achievements of schools, teachers, learners and the very many individuals who worked tirelessly to achieve these results, but rather to redirect focus simultaneously onto a bigger picture. This number has had a history of questions, suggesting that the “real” pass rate is at least 30% lower than reported if dropout, attrition and failure rates etc. are considered. And I am certain that these debates will again surge in the coming days.

While I align with these debates, my exploration wishes to move away from deficit perspective, towards what the pass rate means for the future of young South Africans. In other words, what does passing matric mean for the life success of a child?

PSET options

With the higher number of learners passing PSET (Post School Education and Training) options will be open to many more, but not all of them, even if they qualify, will be able to access this competitive and expensive space. Year-on-year higher education has only been able to absorb about 32% of those with bachelor passes, others may enter the TVET colleges, but many will neither have a space nor the resources. In addition, added exclusions will occur as gateway subjects like mathematics have not been a subject of choice for most learners. Our benchmarks signal a looming crisis with the 2024 TIMSS results showing South African Grade 5 learners (a year older than counterparts) being positioned last out of 58 countries, while the 2021 PIRLS report that 81% of Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning. Added to all of this is the 30% pass mark that further depletes the value of this number. So, the question to be asked is whether this percentage guarantees young people a key to a successful future.

The reality once the celebratory dust settles is that their preparation for a life and a future without access to further education, learnerships, finances and economic opportunities is bleak. What will happen to the vast majority who require alternatives that are readily available and inexpensive? Have we prepared physical and online spaces that can guide them towards self-help and targeted alternatives? Are there pathways to support a sustainable livelihood? And how has the schooling they have successfully mastered skilled them to tackle the routes that are not familiar or regular?

Reconfiguration of learning

In my quest to find out what young people think about in terms of their future after matric I found that listening to them offered some plausible solutions. For example, many young people I spoke to already have a “side hustle” to either make ends meet or to obtain additional resources.  Harambee also confirms this finding that that there are 1.2 million young micro-entrepreneurs in South Africa’s informal sector. These “side hustles” should not be viewed as a hobby or just something to do until something better comes up, but rather they should be seen as opportunities for growth and development of young people’s ideas. My own research on entrepreneurial leadership amongst school principals shows how a school’s deliberate focus on developing “enterprise” amongst learners supports their capacity to earn while they learn. In other projects where school leaders have taken learning into the school food garden, vital skills development beyond the outcomes of the syllabus has emerged. Therefore, the reconfiguring of learning in a system with limitations, that often exclude the poorest, the conversation has to go beyond the celebration of numbers. Within the bigger picture of the future of South Africa’s youth, what is its value?

Hence, the time has come for perspectives on education to shift by keeping up with young people’s lived reality. Together with career advice, schools and colleges need to offer more entrepreneurial, financial literacy and makerspace learning. They also need to actively encourage side hustles and actively develop learner enterprise so that young people can be offered skills and offered tools that give them a fighting chance at life success. Public institutions and labour market platforms also need to reconfigure, and question outdated ideas in labour market institutions of what constitutes work so that new definitions can be included. In this way, millions of young people, who need access to support to grow their good ideas into something more sustainable is possible.

For me, listening and talking to young people and providing spaces for their voices to inform educational practices and post-matric pathways to success offers insights that might radically turn around an inefficient system that consistently show young South Africans and their education as poor and in perpetual crisis. Listening to young people also offers insights into the barriers of entry that prevent them as future entrepreneurs to offer ongoing economic participation. Perhaps instead of worrying about matric results and numbers, we should spend more time listening to them.

SDG 4

In thinking about SDG 4 “Quality Education for All” one needs a deeper consideration, more than simply a matric pass rate. It requires an understanding of young people’s lived realities, their propensity to innovate, to become educated through various formal and informal means, etc. My perspective on the matter as I continue conversations with young people, is that they are already educating themselves through alternative pathways, it’s just that what’s formally on offer is far removed from their lived reality, their resilience and their abilities. The matric result does not speak of this. Education needs to be inclusive; it needs to be more than just a grade. It needs to prepare learners for life success not just survival, but for them to thrive in an uncertain future world.

By Prof Kat Yassim (University of Johannesburg, Department of Education Leadership and Management, Faculty of Education)

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