IT HAS become a glittering ritual that masks the fault lines of our education system. Every year, the Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga parades matric “top achievers”.
She treats them like VIPs.
They are flown from all over the country, hotel accommodation is booked and, to top it all, they are given an opportunity to appear on TV.
At provincial level, education MECs host glitzy events to honour matric pupils who have made the provinces proud.
Previously, the Limpopo department of education would even give the top achiever a car.
Top achievers must be celebrated because, in the words of education analyst, Graeme Bloch, “they worked bloody hard”.
After all, education is the most effective instrument to help resolve what the government calls the “triple challenge” – unemployment, inequality and poverty.
But the celebration of such achievements in matric should be the celebration of a better future devoid of the triple challenge.
In his book What Should The Left Propose? Brazilian intellectual Roberto Unger remarks: “ must rescue the child from its family, its class, its culture, and its historical period. In its resource base the school must compensate for inequalities rather than reinforce them.”
In his popular book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, French economist Thomas Piketty argues that the principal force of convergence – the reduction of inequality of wealth – is the diffusion of knowledge.
This depends in large part on education policies, access to training and to the acquisition of appropriate skills.
On the surface and based on Motshekga’s annual parades, there seems to be progress towards what Unger calls “rescuing the child from its historical period”.
If we consider the top black achievers who are paraded such as Reginald Champala from Dr Harry Gwala Secondary School in Emaphupheni, an informal settlement east of Johannesburg, the school system is making strides.
With seven distinctions including 100% in maths, physical science, life sciences and geography, Champala could easily have come from Selborne College, a school of “high net worth pupils” from East London, Eastern Cape. Champala’s results are no different to those of Rohin Jain from Selborne College, a quintile five, top class school.
Jain was also announced as top achiever. He obtained 100% in maths and physical sciences, 99% in accounting and 95% in life sciences.
But scratch the surface a little and the glaring fault lines of inequalities are devastating.
Champala represents a tiny minority from his group who are likely to jump from poverty to wealth in the long term.
In the category called quintile one, his school is poorer.
For the last two years the gap between pupils who achieve bachelor studies passes from poorer schools compared to those from wealthier ones (quintile five) has been growing.
In 2013 there were 21 068 pupils from quintile one schools who obtained a bachelor pass compared to 55 181 in quintile five.
Last year there were only 16 286 pupils from quintile one who achieved bachelor passes while there were 34 843 in quintile five.
Bachelor passes mean that pupils will get into university and obtain degrees that will more likely secure them decent jobs or help them to become future innovators.
But if less pupils in quintile one get bachelor passes than in quintile five, it means future income gaps will resemble the present inequalities and unemployment trends. The cumulative millions of those who drop out and those who don’t make the grade will more likely reproduce poverty trends.
The link between education (or lack of it) and the “triple challenge” cannot be overstated.
The highest grade in the school system, matric provides a clue of whether an individual pupil can be “rescued”.
The wealthy and those with high incomes send their children to expensive schools which offer high quality education.
The “high net worth” children are likely to secure high income jobs and probably build more wealth (capital) from which they are likely to derive more income. This group is significantly white, but more blacks are joining.
The poor are likely to send their children to ill-equipped schools, with fewer teachers and generally lacking in resources.
If they are lucky, the “low class” children will occupy low-paying jobs and might find it difficult to generate any significant wealth.
For the poor, a poor quality education tends to reproduce low-income earners who are unlikely to leave behind any significant wealth to be inherited.
Education for this group of people who are mainly, if not exclusively black, is a transmission belt to the worst side of the inequality scale.
If government’s policies are anchored on the “triple challenge”, then Motshekga’s annual matric announcements must not emphasise the overall pass rate.
Society’s focus on averages is misguided.
She must tell the nation whether the results indicate any progress in tackling the triple challenge – now and in the future.
It can't be right that with all the “interventions” that government always introduces to get good results out of these schools, we are still seeing only a handful of pupils regarded as “top achievers”.
And in most cases some of these pupils who come from poorer schools are either in second or third place.
In his January 8 statement President Jacob Zuma said: “The triple challenges of unemployment, poverty and inequality persist and the task of the ANC in the second phase of the democratic transition is that of radical socio-economic transformation.”
He should have added that it persists because the school system reproduces and reinforces it.
For a country that spends 5% of its GDP on basic education, we surely should be seeing more pupils paraded as top achievers.
Mpumelelo Mkhabela is the editor of Sowetan.
Bongekile Macupe is the newspaper’s education reporter
Huge gap between school in settlement and Selborne
She treats them like VIPs.
They are flown from all over the country, hotel accommodation is booked and, to top it all, they are given an opportunity to appear on TV.
At provincial level, education MECs host glitzy events to honour matric pupils who have made the provinces proud.
Previously, the Limpopo department of education would even give the top achiever a car.
Top achievers must be celebrated because, in the words of education analyst, Graeme Bloch, “they worked bloody hard”.
After all, education is the most effective instrument to help resolve what the government calls the “triple challenge” – unemployment, inequality and poverty.
But the celebration of such achievements in matric should be the celebration of a better future devoid of the triple challenge.
In his book What Should The Left Propose? Brazilian intellectual Roberto Unger remarks: “ must rescue the child from its family, its class, its culture, and its historical period. In its resource base the school must compensate for inequalities rather than reinforce them.”
In his popular book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, French economist Thomas Piketty argues that the principal force of convergence – the reduction of inequality of wealth – is the diffusion of knowledge.
This depends in large part on education policies, access to training and to the acquisition of appropriate skills.
On the surface and based on Motshekga’s annual parades, there seems to be progress towards what Unger calls “rescuing the child from its historical period”.
If we consider the top black achievers who are paraded such as Reginald Champala from Dr Harry Gwala Secondary School in Emaphupheni, an informal settlement east of Johannesburg, the school system is making strides.
With seven distinctions including 100% in maths, physical science, life sciences and geography, Champala could easily have come from Selborne College, a school of “high net worth pupils” from East London, Eastern Cape. Champala’s results are no different to those of Rohin Jain from Selborne College, a quintile five, top class school.
Jain was also announced as top achiever. He obtained 100% in maths and physical sciences, 99% in accounting and 95% in life sciences.
But scratch the surface a little and the glaring fault lines of inequalities are devastating.
Champala represents a tiny minority from his group who are likely to jump from poverty to wealth in the long term.
In the category called quintile one, his school is poorer.
For the last two years the gap between pupils who achieve bachelor studies passes from poorer schools compared to those from wealthier ones (quintile five) has been growing.
In 2013 there were 21 068 pupils from quintile one schools who obtained a bachelor pass compared to 55 181 in quintile five.
Last year there were only 16 286 pupils from quintile one who achieved bachelor passes while there were 34 843 in quintile five.
Bachelor passes mean that pupils will get into university and obtain degrees that will more likely secure them decent jobs or help them to become future innovators.
But if less pupils in quintile one get bachelor passes than in quintile five, it means future income gaps will resemble the present inequalities and unemployment trends. The cumulative millions of those who drop out and those who don’t make the grade will more likely reproduce poverty trends.
The link between education (or lack of it) and the “triple challenge” cannot be overstated.
The highest grade in the school system, matric provides a clue of whether an individual pupil can be “rescued”.
The wealthy and those with high incomes send their children to expensive schools which offer high quality education.
The “high net worth” children are likely to secure high income jobs and probably build more wealth (capital) from which they are likely to derive more income. This group is significantly white, but more blacks are joining.
The poor are likely to send their children to ill-equipped schools, with fewer teachers and generally lacking in resources.
If they are lucky, the “low class” children will occupy low-paying jobs and might find it difficult to generate any significant wealth.
For the poor, a poor quality education tends to reproduce low-income earners who are unlikely to leave behind any significant wealth to be inherited.
Education for this group of people who are mainly, if not exclusively black, is a transmission belt to the worst side of the inequality scale.
If government’s policies are anchored on the “triple challenge”, then Motshekga’s annual matric announcements must not emphasise the overall pass rate.
Society’s focus on averages is misguided.
She must tell the nation whether the results indicate any progress in tackling the triple challenge – now and in the future.
It can't be right that with all the “interventions” that government always introduces to get good results out of these schools, we are still seeing only a handful of pupils regarded as “top achievers”.
And in most cases some of these pupils who come from poorer schools are either in second or third place.
In his January 8 statement President Jacob Zuma said: “The triple challenges of unemployment, poverty and inequality persist and the task of the ANC in the second phase of the democratic transition is that of radical socio-economic transformation.”
He should have added that it persists because the school system reproduces and reinforces it.
For a country that spends 5% of its GDP on basic education, we surely should be seeing more pupils paraded as top achievers.
Mpumelelo Mkhabela is the editor of Sowetan.
Bongekile Macupe is the newspaper’s education reporter
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