By James Brew.

Five years after apartheid, black students are still worse off in matriculation exams. According to Beverley Bojang, an educational adviser, the major factor in the poor showing is a lack of professional support for teachers. She says there is a growing gap in black schools between what is taught and what is sought by matric examiners.

Nationally, though, the 1999 matriculation pass rate of 48.9% held firm against the previous year's 49.3%, and was slightly ahead of the 47.8% in 1997 but still well down on the 54.4% recorded in 1996.

No wonder, the renowned educational policy analyst, Professor Jonathan Jansen, (who doubles as the vice-rector of the University of Durban-Westville) is not happy with the results: "Clearly, year after year since 1994 we have more or less the same results." He says the education minister Kader Asmal should publicly admit that there is a "matric crisis" and hold a seminar to work out "concrete plans" with interested parties.

Under apartheid, black schools were denied adequate professional support services such as in-service training for teachers and monitoring what goes on there. The situation worsened last year as the provincial education departments further reduced the support services because of budgetary constraints.

Other negative factors include poor planning, unscrupulous teachers, apathetic parents and principals without adequate managerial experience and discipline. The lack of co-ordination of resources at national level, poor delivery of textbooks and other teaching aids, as well as the late deployment of teachers to needy schools have all had an effect.

Currently, teachers' salaries eat up 91% of South Africa's education budget of R46.8 billion (1999 figure). Which leaves just 9% for maintaining school buildings or building new ones, providing books, supporting universities, funding bursaries and providing in-service training for teachers.

But Kader Asmal, the education minister, says this is cause for sober reflection rather than major disappointment. He is happy that the overall national performance in the matric exams stabilised in 1999. He says his ministry's target is a 5% annual improvement on the results.

But Prof. Jansen begs to disagree: "Nothing significant has happened from a policy point of view; and from the level of national government to intervene in the senior phases of schooling. To sell nine-point plans, and appear to be well-spoken and impressive, does not bring results and changes in schools."

Three provinces - Northern, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal - improved on last year's results, while the other six provinces declined. Of these the Eastern Cape registered the biggest drop, from 45.1% to 40.2%. Although the Western Cape also saw a drop of 0.2% to 78.8%, it had the highest pass rate in the country.

In many schools, particularly black dominated schools, students get far less than 200 days of teaching or learning time a year. There are also management problems - timetables are not adhered to and teachers are guilty of chronic absenteeism. President Thabo Mbeki has recently encouraged Asmal and senior officials in the education ministry to pay unannounced visits to schools to catch the culprits.

Though the government commits nearly R40bn a year to education - a major slice of the national budget and one of the highest proportions of state spending in the world - it is going to take some time, and doing, to bring the pass rate of black students up to acceptable levels.