The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) replied as follows to questions from Cape Talk and KFM radio on school pass rates:

1. What is the expected pass rate in the province regarding learners in lower grades (excluding matrics)?

The overall pass rate of learners below matric has hovered around 87% for the past two years. We don't expect significant deviations from this pass rate.

2. How are children generally coping with the curriculum?

We have been testing the literacy and numeracy skills of primary school learners every year since 2002, alternating between Grades 3 and 6.

The tests show that literacy skills are improving steadily, but learners still struggle with maths.

We are now adapting our literacy and numeracy strategy to focus more attention to maths.

The issue is not really about the curriculum. It's about how the curriculum is taught. Our literacy and numeracy strategy has shown that you improve results by simply getting the basics right.

Promotion figures in high school suggest that Grade 9s find the transition to Grade 10 difficult, but then get up to speed by the time they reach matric.

Our pass rate for Grade 11 in 2007 was slightly better than that for 2006, which suggests that our teachers and learners have adapted quite well to the demands of the national curriculum for Grades 10 to 12.

3. What has the pass rate been like in the province in the past five years?

We only have stats immediately available for 2006 and 2007. The overall pass rate for Grades 1 to 11 was 87.87% in 2006 and 86.68% in 2007, a difference of just over 1%. We do not see this as statistically significant.

4. Is there any changes expected to the curriculum to help keep the failure rate under control?

We don't regard the failure rate as out of control, although we can always do more to improve the pass rate.

We do not plan to change the curriculum, but we are improving our support to schools in many ways, to deliver the curriculum more effectively.

For example, our literacy and numeracy strategy has helped to ensure a steady increase in the reading skills of primary school learners.

We have redesigned the department to bring development support much closer to schools via 49 strong circuit teams.

We have introduced a wide range of interventions to improve support for teaching and learning, from teacher training to investment in infrastructure, libraries and computer technology.

Our literacy and numeracy strategy has shown that interventions do work. We also learn a lot from schools that have taken the initiative to improve teaching and learning, and we are looking at ways of sharing best practice.

The curriculum has been around for some time. The national Department of Education published the first version of Curriculum 2005 in 1997, and a revised version in 2002. The DoE published the curriculum for Grades 10 to 12 in 2003.

Schools and the WCED have prepared for introduction of the new matric syllabus for the past six years. We introduced the curriculum in schools in 2006, starting with Grade 10. We are reasonably confident that our matrics will do well, based on their results in Grade 11 last year.