South Africa is still not addressing the root causes of the decline in the number of learners who take mathematics or the decrease in the pass rate of those who take the subject, says professor Rashied Small, SAIPA executive: centre for future excellence.
Small said the decline in the number of learners who take mathematics and the low pass rate of those who take the subject can be attributed to the shortage of qualified teachers in mathematics and consequently the teaching methodology.
Less than 30% of learners take pure mathematics and of that 30% only half manage to pass their exams.
“The decision is not to take maths influences your career path. It is not only for accountancy that you need mathematics to gain university entrance. Almost every career path requires you to have mathematics in matric. Students are excluded from certain careers mainly because of their choice not to take maths,” said Small.
School appear to encourage learners who struggle maths to take maths literacy which is seen as the lower grade mathematics. Learners who choose to take maths literacy from grade 10 are allowed to do so. The Department of Basic Education fears ending on a low pass rate with learners taking pure maths and allows learners to take maths literacy to boost the number of passes.
In a school with 100 matric pupils only 12 of them will take pure maths, said Faith Ngwenya, technical and standards executive at SAIPA (South African Institute of Professional Accountants).
SAIPA said it has been running support programmes in mathematics, accounting and maths literacy since 2017 and has seen a decline in learners taking the subjects ever since. Ngwenya said the lack of qualified maths teachers, “those who do teach the subject are not comfortable doing it. They teach learners the solution which they cannot themselves explain”.
Small added that the current method used to teach learners, particularly in public schools, does not inform the learner of the logic that underpins the mathematical formulas. “The logic of maths has been taken out of our teaching methods. We need to teach the logic. We need to come back to the basics.”
Source: Business Tech, image from News Beezer