The Free State department of education is considering plans to make mathematics more attractive to learners.
The 2019 matric results saw a decline in mathematics performance from last year.
The number of matriculants in the country who wrote the subject dropped from more than 270 000 in 2018, to just over 220 000 in 2019.
Only 54% of learners who wrote the exam passed it, which was a decline from the 58% attained in 2018.
Free State Education MEC Tate Makgoe, says the knowledge gap can be bridged through hard work and commitment.
“We want to come up with an action plan that would respond directly to issues that we had identified. Already some of them we had identified, things like empowering workshops to the teachers,” adds Makgoe.
“Many of them have already spoken about students in geometry. We need to organise these kinds of support systems. Here at the university (of the Free State), we are going to work with them to ensure that those kind of workshops can be arranged for our teachers.”
“There’re also applications in terms of calculus, where many of them don’t know it at the application level. So, it’s very clear that we need to be able to do that, because we are sure that if we can support the teachers, it would be very easy for the learners,” explains Makgoe.
