South Africa’s Basic Education system, with its lowered standards, is too inadequate to properly prepare learners for training after school and that puts a damper on the 2017 matric results that have just been announced, says adv Anton Alberts, FF Plus chairperson, and Dr Wynand Boshoff, FF Plus spokesperson on Basic Education.

Adv Alberts and Dr Boshoff would like to congratulate the successful learners on their results on behalf of the FF Plus and they urge those learners that did not succeed not to give up hope, but to do everything in their power to pass the matric exam.

According to adv Alberts and Dr Boshoff, there are three gaps in the system that are particularly disadvantageous to learners at present. They are:

• The majority of learners enter the labour force with matric being their highest qualification, but career skills are not a priority.
• Education is also increasingly being centralised to serve the ANC’s ideologies and that marginalises everyone that strive for better.
• As opposed to the Gauteng Education Minister’s suggestion to centralise matric exams even more, the FF Plus proposes greater freedom of choice. It is recommended that schools receive a monetary grant from the state that they can use to either register with the Department of Basic Education or with one of the independent examinations boards (IEB of SACAI).

The Higher Education system is also failing Afrikaans-speaking matriculants, particularly from the Northern and Western Cape provinces, all the more. Instead of expanding Higher Education to include instruction in other indigenous languages, misdirected attempts at redress have seen Afrikaans being replaced by English.

• In 2011, Boshoff obtained a PhD in Curriculum Studies and Instructional Design.

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