DA MP Gavin Davies was disingenuous and misleading when he said on Wednesday that the recent SACMEQ IV results showed the country's teachers were performing poorly, the department said on Thursday.

The Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) is a collaborative network of researchers formed in 1995 by 15 southern African countries.

"We would like to urge the DA and its representatives to check their records and read documents before issuing irresponsible statements such as the one that they have issued," a department statement read.

"Their statement is not only factually inaccurate, but is indeed baseless, devoid of any truth and extremely malicious."

Davis said on Wednesday that the SACMEQ IV report found that only 32.9% of Grade 6 teachers demonstrated "critical reading" skills compared to 77.8% in the previous III report.

Data omitted in results

Similarly, teachers' reading scores dropped from 758 to 672, and a drop in mathematics from 764 to 757 was recorded, he said.

According to Davis, a department representative at a portfolio committee meeting on Wednesday said "many education graduates from university have never been in a classroom".

The department, however, said it was made very clear in the same committee meeting that the SACMEQ IV results omitted data from other countries, and was thus skewed in its provisional state.

"As a result we could not share their information until the verification is done and the final report is released."

The department urged opposition parties and researchers alike not to make statements on the report until the verification process was complete.

Davis meanwhile has written to Minister Angie Motshekga to request a full-scale review of teacher training and development in the country.

News24.com