Cape maths, language skills improve Dominic Adriaanse, Cape Times, 28 January 2016 Western Cape schoolchildren are steadily improving their language and mathematics results in the provincial systemic tests. On Wednesday, Education MEC Debbie Schäfer commended schools for improving their scores in the Language and Mathematics Systemic Tests. But the SA Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) says the systemic tests are a waste of time and money, and are not a true reflection of how well Western Cape pupils are doing, because they are only administered provincially. The pass rate for the systemic test is 50 percent. Grade 3 mathematics improved by 10.4 percentage points from 47.2 percent in 2011 to 57.6 percentage points in 2015. Grade 3 language remained the same at 42.4 percent. Grade 6 maths improved by 14.3 percentage points from 23.4 percent in 2011 to 37.7 percent in 2015. Language showed an improvement of 5.3 percentage points from a pass rate of 31.5 percent in 2011 to 36.8 percent in 2015. The pass rate for Grade 9 mathematics has improved by 11.8 percent, from 10.4 percent in 2011 to 22.2 percent in 2015. The average mark improved by 9 percent, from 24.9 percent in 2011 to 33.9 percent in 2015. The Grade 9 language pass rate saw steady improvement from 44.2 percent in 2011 to 53 percent in 2015, an increase of 8.8 percent. The average mark improved by 3.4 percent from 48.9 to 52.3 percent during this period. Schäfer said the systemic tests were designed to act as a measuring tool in testing Grades 3, 6 and 9 language and mathematics skills, and to identify where improvement was needed. Tests and grading were done by an external, independent entity and teachers were not required to prepare pupils specifically for these assessments. SADTU SADTU provincial secretary Jonavon Rustin said they were still against the testing and would intensify their campaign against it. “The Western Cape Education Department should invest the money on interventions like teacher development and learning and teaching support material instead of paying service providers to test our learners,” said Rustin. Schäfer’s spokesperson Jessica Shelver disagreed with Rustin and views the testing as a way to determine what materials and development are needed, and says while stakeholder relations are mainly good, only SADTU opposes their measures. “It would appear that our methods are working. We trust that SADTU will take note of this and support them in the interest of our learners and their education,” said Shelver. Rustin said the tests revealed nothing new. The department was “overtesting” pupils and SADTU was against wasting money on yearly testing when there was already years of data available. SADTU national spokesperson Nomusa Cembi said the systemic testing was not a true reflection of the testing’s success as it was not administered throughout the country. From: http://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/cape-maths-language-skills-improve-1976622 -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
