WCED announces Language and Literacy results

Athenkosi Mvane

14 January 2013

Earlier today, Western Cape Minister of Education Donald Grant announced the results for 2012 in Language and Mathematics.

Grant said that the provincial government firmly believed in the importance of systemic testing in the management of education and the improvement of learner performance.

This comes after the Ministry conducted independent testing for Grades 3, Grade 6 and Grade 9 in Language and in Mathematics.

In October last year, 250 000 learners from Grades 3, 6 and 9 from 1 421 Public ordinary schools and Independent schools took part in the tests.

Of those students; 83 030 were from Grade 3, 79 301from Grade 6 and 89 674.

All the grades showed a significant improvement in both subjects from the previous year’s results.

Grade 3 language results showed a result of 38.9%, an improvement of 8.5% from 2011’s 30.4 %.

Grade 6 stood at 36.9 %, an improvement of 5.4 % as compare with 2011’s 31.5 %.

Grade 9 recorded a 48.2 %, an improvement of 4.0 % from 2011’s 44.2 %.

In the Mathematics results, Grade 3 passed with 51.5 % from 47.6 % in 2011.

Grade 6 showed a 3.0 % improvement of 26.4 % from 2011’s 23.4 %.

Grade 9 stood at 13.9 %, an improvement of 3.5 % from 10.9 % from 2011’s.

Grant said “we were aware in 2009 that our strategy to improve literacy and numeracy would take time”.

Grant said that the important thing was to ensure that improvement are being made.

“We in fact, stated that it would take ten years before we would be satisfied with the levels of outcomes in these areas” Grant added.

Head of Department Penny Vinjevold said that for Grade 3 numeracy, the percentage pass rate has increased to over 50 %

“This result, together with the increase in the language result, is hopeful” Vinjevold added suggesting that the departments’ strategies in the Foundation Phase have yielded positive results.