Low up take of science and maths concerning: Gwarube

Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube says the department remains concerned about the uptake of science and maths subjects. Senior officials from the department appeared before Parliament’s Portfolio Committee to analyse the matric results of last year.

The class of 2024 achieved a pass rate of 87.3 percent, the highest ever.

Gwarube says the department is looking at ways to encourage more learners from a younger age to take up subjects related to science, technology, engineering and maths.

The department says the number of learners taking mathematics dropped by over 12 000 last year.

“The national uptake of mathematics is certainly not where it should be. We are at 35.3% at the moment compared to 62% of the learners taking maths literacy and we want to see this shift. We want 60% of our learners taking maths and possibly 35 to 36% taking maths literacy and the rest of our learners taking technical maths. So, this is an area where a lot of work needs to be done,” says Assessment Director-General at the Department, Dr. Rufus Poliah.

“Yes, we are concerned about the uptake and performance in maths and science, accounting and other gateway subjects and the problems is that we are concerned that there is a drop off in the learners who are enrolling for those subjects. So, it then means that one of things that we need to do and this is the more longer-term investment but one of the things we need to do is to really intensify our efforts in earlier grades particularly foundation phase to make sure that we are supporting learners adequately,” says Gwarube.