The Department of Basic Education says the drop in learners taking accounting as a school subject is due to the department’s decision to link the subject with that of pure mathematics.
The department has also reported a sharp decrease of the pass rate in accounting from 69.5% in 2016 to 66.1% in the 2017 matric results.
Spokesperson for the Minister of Basic Education Troy Martens says Minister Angie Motshekga has now reversed that decision in hopes of increasing the pass rate for this year.
“One of the things that we did a few years ago is we decided to link up accounting with maths so we made it compulsory for learners who take accounting to take pure mathematics as well as opposed to maths literacy and this we found had quite a negative impact on the subject itself.”
“We have now reversed that decision. So we (are) hoping that this will have a positive impact on the subject and that we’ll see more learners taking it up. This year will be the first year that we would hopefully see that uptake beginning to happen,” explains Martens.
