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Our education system can take important lessons from aviation — or crash and burn

Jonathan Molver
By Jonathan Molver
23 Jan 2024
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South Africa’s education system desperately needs regular standardised assessments with rigorous diagnostics that can be used to track progress and inform curriculum delivery and learning interventions.

Matric results were released on Friday 19 January 2024, and the nation is celebrating an “unprecedented 82.9% pass rate”. The matric exam is designed to play both a certification and diagnostic role — confirming learner attainment and providing insights required to strengthen the system.

Diagnostic data, however, holds very little value in hindsight, particularly for the 590,000 children who dropped out early or failed their finals. If we are to radically improve the prospects of young people in South Africa, we need greater transparency, better data and increased accountability — far earlier than Grade 12.

According to the Department of Basic Education (DBE), the “NSC examination results enables the education sector to take cognisance of successes and review deficiencies of various strategies and interventions that have impacted on participating candidates. The NSC examination is multi-fold in its purpose. It is premised on providing valuable data to education planners, institutional role players and decision-makers in the sector, to identify weaknesses in the system with a view to improving the quality of basic education. It also serves a certification role, confirming candidate attainment of expected learning outcomes. Finally, it serves as an important barometer of the health of the basic education system”.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Experts welcome matric pass rate increase but note 450,000 learners dropped out

In theory — yes. In practice, less so. If we’re to achieve the NDP 2030 goal of 90%, we might consider taking some lessons on data-driven decision-making from the aviation industry.

Learning from failure


In 1912, eight out of 14 US Army pilots died in crashes: more than half. In 2013, there were 36.4 million commercial flights worldwide carrying more than three billion passengers, according to the International Air Transport Association. Only 210 people died. A radical improvement. These improvements were made possible because airline companies have developed a culture that embraced learning from failure.  

Nearly all the learning has come from the introduction of the black box. Every aeroplane is fitted with two. The data collected from black boxes after every flight (not just the accidents) is analysed to improve safety and efficiency.

This culture of clarity, transparency, monitoring and accountability drives an iterative process of learning, and provides an interesting contrast to the current culture of our education system.

It may sound overly dramatic, but when it comes to education our children’s lives, and our nation’s future, are literally at stake. The data supporting this is compelling. If you finish school with a bachelor’s pass rate and complete university, you are likely to find yourself within the 15% of the population occupying highly skilled professional jobs, while a matric pass would most likely guarantee semi-skilled work.

Employment has strong correlations with income, life expectancy, crime levels, and overall life satisfaction. Ideally, therefore, all education systems should have a similar culture of transparency, monitoring and accountability, and iterative learning to that of the aviation industry.

But our education system does not.

The matric exam does not “serve as an important barometer of the health of the basic education system” because it does not give us an accurate assessment of performance. There is no reference in the annual results publication to the NDP target of a 90% pass rate.

Critically, there is neither any reference in the DBE statements to drop-out rates and the impact of those on the actual pass rate. The result is a skewed perspective on the health of the system.

The national pass rate of 82.9% with “significant improvements in the increase of mathematics pass percentage from 55% to 66.5%” tells a story of robust health and radical improvement. The actual pass rate of 49.2%, with 14% of children taking and passing matric maths, tells a story of a desperately sick system in need of radical intervention (figures calculated using DBE enrolment and matric pass data).

The 82.9% pass rate made headlines — the latter not so much. How are we to collectively begin strengthening the system, if the system itself is not honest about how fragile it really is?

Nor does the matric paper do a very good job of “providing valuable data to education planners, institutional role players and decision-makers in the sector, to identify weaknesses in the system with a view to improving the quality of basic education”.

We don’t have enough valid, accurate and reliable data made available to us early enough to do anything meaningful with the information. Our system is much like a black box — a closed, opaque and impregnable entity which obscures the performance of teachers, leaders and most significantly pupils. Until learners write matric and finish school.

By the time we look at the data, over half the children who entered the system as bright and hopeful six-year-olds have been failed. They do not walk away with a qualification that is likely to gain them a fulfilling and secure occupation and a hopeful future.

Finally, this lack of clarity and transparency results in possibly the most critical challenge the system faces — a distinct lack of accountability. Without clear targets or valid, accurate and reliable progress measures, it is virtually impossible to have any degree of rigorous accountability within the system.

It is no wonder that learner outcomes do not feature as a key performance indicator for anyone at any level of the system. Even less surprising is that annual increases are awarded almost unanimously, irrespective of performance.  

Clear targets and transparent measures


Insufficient transparency, data and accountability — a tragic trifecta that combines with devastating effect to contribute to perpetual and chronic underperformance, and, critically, erode any trust that the private sector and civil society have in the state’s capacity to deliver — often undermining effective cross-sectoral collaboration and, ultimately, impact.

If we are to have an accurate and useful assessment of the health of the system, we need to be clear on what our targets are and measure our performance against these. We can begin by referencing NDP targets when publishing matric results, as well as progress against national drop-out targets.

We can add to this a narrative on progress and challenges, and an update on expenditure. This level of transparency can provide helpful data points for the private sector and civil society to engage meaningfully in supporting government with key education priorities. It should also help develop a culture where it is not just safe to fail, but where reporting failures and lessons learned is actively encouraged, and even rewarded.

Following this, we need to equip the system with the tools and mechanisms it needs to monitor, evaluate and improve performance over time.

We tried to do this with the introduction of the Annual National Assessments (ANAs). For various reasons — some in the interests of children, others not — these were scrapped. Some might argue that we have School Based Assessments (SBAs) to track performance at regular points over time. However, these tests are designed, delivered and marked by teachers — and the validity and reliability of the data is therefore at best inconsistent and at worst questionable.

Our system desperately needs regular standardised assessments with rigorous diagnostics that can be used to track progress and inform curriculum delivery and learning interventions. We also need to monitor mechanisms that contribute to improved outcomes — like the quality of teaching, the quality of school leadership and the quality of governance. We need to measure each of these mechanisms, as well as learner outcomes, at regular points throughout the system to allow us to conduct analysis and formulate effective responses before it’s too late.

With clear targets, and valid, accurate and reliable data in place, we can introduce learner outcomes as measurable performance targets across the system — because these tools will collectively bring the clarity and transparency required for rigorous accountability across the system.

Of course, this increased accountability for the officials, leaders and teachers in the system is likely to be uncomfortable and, in some places, unwelcome.

But if we focus on the accountability alone, we’re missing the point.

The point is that clear targets, coupled with valid and reliable data to monitor progress, are not another stick to beat government with. It’s a gift with the potential to save hundreds of thousands of young lives. The education system, like the aviation industry, could use this data to improve efficacy and performance, and avoid the insanity of doing the same things over and over again, each time hoping for a different outcome.

The point is that armed with this data, leaders could lead, teachers could teach, learners could really learn — and our system could soar. DM

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