The past few years for the education sector have not been easy due to the number of challenges that it has faced, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, loadshedding, and service delivery protests
Recently, Department Basic Education (DBE) Minister Angie Motshekga held celebrations of the top achievers from its schools, applauding them for ‘coming out triumphant, despite the challenges’. In an announcement, the Education Department has reminded 2022 matric candidates:
They may collect their results at the centre where they wrote their examinations and results have been made available on 20 January 2023.
On 19 January 2023, Motshekga announced that the National Senior Certificate (NSC) pass rate has increased to 80.1% from 76.4% in 2021.
In this cohort of learners that sat for this exam, the department has confirmed that approximately 1,2 million of them started in Grade 1 in 2011 and nearly 776 000 only reached their 12th year in their school careers in 2022.
DBE spokesperson, Elijah Mhlanga also mentioned that on paper, the class of 2022 was the weakest and most affected but they have demonstrated resilience, strength, and commitment.
According to Motshekga, this year’s NSC matric pass rate of 80.1% is the second highest in history.
Although the Education Department is concerned about the learner dropout rate, it has confirmed that the number of learners reaching Grade 12 has been increasing progressively in recent years.
The Free State led with the highest number of learners who passed their 2022 NSC exams for four years in a row, scoring a pass rate of 88.5%, an increase of 2.8% from 2021.
The Gauteng province came in second, having achieved a pass rate of 84.4%, an increase of 1.6% from 2021.
According to Basic Education, the top three provinces that have the highest improvements in their performances are KwaZulu-Natal with 6.2%, Limpopo with 5.3%, and the Eastern Cape with 4.2%.
Across all nine provinces, none of them performed below the 70% pass rate and neither declined when compared with the previous year.
When it comes to Districts, of the 75 districts attained pass rates lower than 60%, while four districts performed at 60% and 69.9%.
In the 29 districts that achieved a performance between 70% and 79% in at least seven provinces in South Africa, the Eastern Cape province had the highest number of districts that attained this score.
Additionally, 42 districts – three in the Eastern Cape, five in the Free State, 15 in Gauteng, 11 in KwaZulu-Natal, two in the North West, two in the Northern Cape, and four in the Western Cape, performed at 80% and above.
The departments also revealed that this cohort of learners had the highest number of Bachelor passes in the entire history of the NSC examinations.
It is for this reason that Basic Education took note of the challenges that were faced by the class of 2022, and is delighted that this cohort managed to bag high-quality passes and distinctions.
