SACP STATEMENT ON GRADE 12 RESULTS
The SACP notes and welcomes the announcement of the Technical Report on the results of the 2012 National Senior Certificate examinations.
The SACP congratulates learners, educators, parents, the Minister and MEC's, national and provincial departments and various other volunteers who have worked hard to achieve the overall pass rate 73,9%. Congratulations to the class of 2012!
The improvements, read in conjunction with an increase in the performances in the ANA results, is an indication that indeed the ANC led government didn't make false promises in 2009 when it promised to make education a societal issues. Despite the sustained liberal offensive launched against our developing educational system, the result bode well for the future. Indeed the liberals are busy studying the report in a magnifying glass in order to pour scorn over the achievements. Already we have seen an attempt to conflate the Grade 12 pass rate with the retention rate of the schooling system as a whole by the doomsayers.
The achievements calls for South Africa to double her efforts in order to keep the standard and quality of education of her people high. The SACP will continue to be part of a national initiative of working together with all stakeholders to make Quality, Public, free education fashionable. The SACP will continue to struggle to make sure that our schooling system strives to produce and educate across narrow ideological lines. We will work with SADTU, COSAS, SGB's, alliance formations and NGO's to take the Quality Learning and Teaching Campaign forward. In this regard the SACP believes the ANC led alliance will be able to face the electorate with courage in the 2014 General Elections and report on the success and the consolidation plans as laid out in the resolutions of the 53rd ANC Conference.
The technical report points to areas of weakness that needs further focus and consolidation, with our specific area of interest being on Mathematics.
The continued increases in the NSC pass rate and on those achieving university entrance also means that pressure is mounting on the already pressurized tertiary sector. The SACP calls on government and relevant institutions to plan carefully in order to avoid the tragic events we saw in the beginning of 2012. The SACP believes the opening of new institutions of higher learning in Mpumalanga and the Northern Cape coupled with the expansion of existing institutions remains a sacrosanct task. In this regard, the SACP calls on no learner to be excluded from accessing an institution of higher learning on financial grounds. We urge students to further explore other available options like our growing public FET system.
The SACP sends a message to the class of 2012 that its time to recognise that there are no failures. Those who did not succeed for the first time have various options available to them and we urge them to exercise those options. It is for this reason that the SACP support a call championed by out YCL for an end to the publishing of the results in newspapers.
Congratulations once more to all the learners!
Statement issued by the SACP, January 3 2012
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