Staff Reporter
Free State top learner Chané Nel from Oranje Meisieskool feels the material taught in economics for the National Senior Certificate (NSC) should be updated so it becomes more relevant to the current economic situation.
Nel, who got nine distinctions in the 2021 NSC exams including economics, says the subject is quite demanding in terms of the workload compared to other subjects.
She said this is made even worse by the fact that the main textbook is more than 13 years old yet the exam focuses on the current economic situation.
“Our textbook was written in 2009, and obviously the country’s economic status has changed a lot since then,” said Nel, who plans to study medicine at Stellenbosch University.
She got 87 percent in economics, the only subject she got under 90 percent.
Nel says she wants to have her exam script re-marked as she feels she could have done better.
“I know they are quite strict when marking the national exam but I didn’t expect to get below 90 percent,” she added confidently.
Nel suggested the learning material should be more current so that learners are not surprised when they sit for their exams.
“The economics (exam) papers ask us about current affairs yet we don’t learn much about them,” she lamented.
“In one multi-choice exam question, we were asked: ‘Which of these plans are in place for economic development?’
“But we had not learnt about them. We had only learnt about stuff dating back to 2009.
“So, what l would advise other learners is to follow the news in order to stay up to date with the current economic affairs because you can’t find that in the textbook.”
Education MEC Tate Makgoe admitted during a media briefing that the economics syllabus should be made more relevant to the exam.
“Economics is a challenging subject. The performance has always been low . . . when we were discussing with the district directors, one of the things we did was to look at the profiles of our teachers . . . because if you have done Economics I, you won’t be able to teach Economics II in high school.
“It is my view . . . I suspect that they sometimes ask things that are not in the syllabus but they link them with contextual issues.
“We do have sufficient capacity in the province to deal with economics. I don’t think it will be a major problem to address,” said Makgoe.
A total of 8 481 learners wrote the economics paper last year and 6 139 of them passed.
This gave a pass rate of 72.38 percent, which was 3.03 percentage points lower than the figure for the previous year which stood at 75.4 percent.