EDITORIAL: Maths solution does not add up
South Africans should resist the department’s attempt to make itself look better by sacrificing the education of the country’s youth
The Department of Education is considering removing mathematics as a compulsory promotion requirement of high school students. Have they gone completely mad? The most passing familiarity with the trajectory of modern history suggests that maths is becoming progressively more important and that without a working understanding of maths, it will be increasingly difficult to operate in the modern world. The department has not specified why particularly it wants to scrap the requirement, but it’s clear an anomaly has developed in the education system. It appears some students are passing all subjects other than maths and are aggrieved at the requirement that to pass the exam as a whole, they must pass maths. But it’s not as though the bar is set very high. First, the pass rate for maths is only 40%. In addition, in 2016, a "special condonation dispensation" for maths was applied. According to National Assessment Circular 3 of 2016, pupils who passed all other subjects but failed mathemat...
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