NATIONAL SENIOR CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION SCHOOLS SUBJECT REPORT 5 years: NSC 2012 REPORT ON THE 2012 NATIONAL SENIOR CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION CONTENTS FOREWORD . 2 1 .INTRODUCT ION . 3 2 . SCOPE OF THE SUBJECT PERFORMANCE REPORT . 4 3 . UTILISATION OF THE SUBJECT PERFORMANCE REPORT . 4 4 . SUMMARY OF CANDIDATES PERFORMANCE IN KEY SUBJECTS . 5 CANDIDATES’ PERFORMANCE IN 11 MOST POPULAR SUBJECTS, 2009 – 2012 . 5 CANDIDATES’ PERFORMANCE BY PROVINCE IN SELECTED SUBJECTS, 2012 . 6 5 . SCHOOL PERFORMANCE IN SELECTED SUBJECTS . 7 EASTERN CAPE . 7 FREE STATE . 45 GAUTENG . 59 KWAZULU-NATAL . 91 LIMPOPO . 156 MPUMALANGA . 211 NORTH WEST . 231 NORTHERN CAPE . 246 WESTERN CAPE . 252 1 SCHOOL SUBJECT REPORT REPORT ON THE 2012 NATIONAL SENIOR CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION FOREWORD I am pleased to present the first Schools Subject This Subject Performance Report will help all involved in learner improvement to Report which marks the 5th year of the foreground subject performance in their efforts to drive teaching and learning to the implementation of the National Senior Certificate. next level. Progress made in the following subjects: Mathematics, Physical Sciences, This Schools Subject Report presents the Accounting, Economics, Geography, History and English First Additional Language, performance of each school in the country in terms is welcomed as a positive return on the investment made on teachers and learners in of their performance in key subjects. Therefore to 2012. In our planning for 2013, we will respond appropriately to the emergent issues in obtain a more holistic interpretation of learner subjects where there was marginal or no improvement. performance in the 2012 NSC examinations, this report must be read in conjunction with the School This report completes the feedback loop to all key role players responsible for ensuring Performance Report and the Diagnostic Report on the successful implementation of the NSC. Learner Performance. The introduction of this report I trust that this Report will add to our intervention programme and ensure a more is a confirmation of the commitment by the consolidated approach to subject improvement in 2013. Department to provide districts, subject advisors and curriculum implementers with the vital information that will arm them to tackle the issue of under-performance at school level. Informed by the diagnostic analysis of the 2011 NSC results, all PEDs developed intervention and support plans which targeted underperforming schools, as well as MRS AM MOTSHEKGA, MP the specific areas of weakness in targeted subjects. Provinces continued to build on MINISTER OF BASIC EDUCATION their already entrenched intervention strategies by extending the emphasis to four 02 JANUARY 2013 key areas of concern: teacher support, the development of resources, supplementary tuition and syllabus coverage. Provinces, districts and schools have made a commendable effort to coordinate and implement a variety of systemic interventions to ensure adequate teacher preparedness and learner readiness for the 2012 NSC examination. The introduction of the Annual National Assessment has ensured that we take cognizance of learner performance across the entire education system. There will now be a building from the bottom up in terms of diagnosis and improvement of teaching and learning. SCHOOL SUBJECT REPORT 2 REPORT ON THE 2012 NATIONAL SENIOR CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION 1. INTRODUCTION The Department of Basic Education has embarked on a major drive to ensure It also needs to be noted that although subject knowledge is important, it is not that effective feedback, emanating from the NSC examinations, takes place. This the only factor that determines a good teacher, subject head or subject advisor. therefore requires all available data that will be useful for improvement of learner Becoming a good teacher requires certain personal qualities such as perseverance, performance at the school level to be at the disposal of the relevant officials involved resilience, initiative and willingness to learn from experience, observations and in this improvement process. In 2011 for the first time, the DBE published the overall advice. The teacher reading this report should therefore seek to emulate good results of each school in the country. This allowed support officials to evaluate the results achieved by fellow teachers in the district. It takes a sense of humility to overall performance of the school and to establish trends in the performance of the consult successful teachers, observe experienced and accomplished teachers specific school over a three year period. However, this report does not inform the teaching their lessons, engage in conversations with peers, attend seminars, support officials of individual subject performance, which is critical in determining, lectures and workshop on content training and teaching strategies and indulge in where the area of weakness or strength lies. Hence this report that presents the continuous reading of relevant material containing information about the subject performance per subject is the logical follow up from an overall School Performance knowledge. Report . In addition in 2011, to help improve the performance of all schools in the country, the Department of Basic Education conducted an in-depth diagnostic analysis of subject performance in selected subjects. This report targeted core subjects which are taken by the majority of the candidates in the country. For each question paper of each subject, a per question analysis was conducted and the reasons for poor performance in each of these questions was probed and remedial measures were suggested. This report served as a useful tool to drive learner improvement programmes in 2012. This subject performance report, will at a glance provide districts with an indication of the subject performance across districts. In cases where good performance is observed a systematic enquiry could be conducted to ascertain the reasons for the good performance. The impact of the intervention programs in each of the schools must be evaluated to ensure that the best practices are extended to other schools in the district. 3 SCHOOL SUBJECT REPORT REPORT ON THE 2012 NATIONAL SENIOR CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION 2. SCOPE OF THE SUBJECT PERFORMANCE 3. UTILISATION OF THE SUBJECT PERFORMANCE REPORT REPORT This report will cover the following subjects: Mathematics, Physical Sciences, Life The report will be used by subject advisors, national curriculum specialists and Sciences, Accounting, History, Geography, Economics, Business Studies, English district officials as essential information to assist with their intervention programmes. First Additional Language and Mathematical Literacy. It is necessary for each district official to have all the relevant information about the profile of each school in the district in order to embark on a meaningful intervention. The data that will be provided is only for the current year and will include the number of learners that wrote the subject at the school and the This report provides details on the number of learners that wrote the examination percentage that passed, using the 30% as the level of achievement. in a particular subject and the percentage of learners that obtained a mark above 30%, which is the current minimum mark to pass a subject. The inclusion of the number of learners in Grade 12 will make district officials to evaluate the number of learners in Grade 12 against the number of learners in Grade 11 so as to ascertain whether the school’s success is as a result of the gate keeping strategy. Once schools that adopt gate keeping strategy have been exposed they will resort to honest intervention strategy that will ensure that more learners progress to Grade 12. This is an appropriate tool to monitor the school population in each classroom. The subject report will also be used to compare performance across subjects at a school and at a district or cluster. Schools that perform well in one subject should also perform at an equivalent level in other subjects, particularly related subjects e.g. Mathematics and Physical Sciences. Where there is a lack of correlation between related subjects, further investigations must be carried out by subject advisors to establish the reason for this non-alignment of performance. This may quite often point to competency levels of teachers or differences in the cohort of learners. This report is therefore of critical importance in that it to a large extent reflects on the performance of each teacher, where one teacher teaches the subject at the school. These teachers are usually masked by the overall school performance results and they could escape from the accountability chain. With the introduction of the subject Performance Report the accountability is re-instated to the teacher. SCHOOL SUBJECT REPORT 4 REPORT ON THE 2012 NATIONAL SENIOR CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION 4. SUMMARY OF CANDIDATES PERFORMANCE IN KEY SUBJECTS CANDIDATES’ PERFORMANCE IN 11 MOST POPULAR SUBJECTS, 2009 – 2012 2009 2010 2011 2012 Subjects Wrote Achieved at 30% & above % achieved Wrote Achieved at 30% & above % achieved Wrote Achieved at 30% & above % achieved Wrote Achieved at 30% & above % achieved Accounting 174 347 107 156 61.5 160 991 101 093 62.8 137 903 84 972 61.6 134 978 88 508 65.6 Agricultural Sciences 90 136 46 597 51.7 85 523 53 573 62.6 77 719 55 404 71.3 78 148 57 571 73.7 Business Studies 206 553 148 469 71.9 200 795 142 742 71.1 187 677 147 559 78.6 195 507 151 237 77.4 Economics 153 522 109 955 71.6 147 289 110