{"id":86739,"date":"2024-01-19T11:52:01","date_gmt":"2024-01-19T11:52:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/?p=86739"},"modified":"2025-11-17T17:41:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T17:41:10","slug":"2023-matric-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/2024\/01\/19\/2023-matric-results\/","title":{"rendered":"83% matric pass rate, but is SA making the grade?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South Africa has recorded the highest matric pass rate since at least 2009 with 82.9%. Almost 573,000 of the 691,160 young adults did enough to receive their National Senior Certificates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the 2023 candidates probably started their school journey in Grade 1 in 2012. That year 1,208,973 children began their first year of primary school. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Somewhere along the way, 4 out of every 10 of those children either failed a grade or grades, left the country or the public school system, died or dropped out of school. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That pattern has repeated itself for years. The chart below shows data for the past 6. The group that passed this year is less than half (47%) the size of the grade 1 class of 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Doing the sums<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The proportion of the matric class that writes maths has been decreasing since 2009. For the past 3 years, around a third of learners wrote the NSC maths exams. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tragedy is that in 2021 and 2022, 80% of them did not pass the subject with 50% or more. Even fewer got the 60% needed to get into a science, technology or engineering degree. In 2021, for example, 13% (34,451 learners) got 60% or more for maths. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This year, 16% (41,273 learners) got 60% in maths, which is, remarkably, higher than the target of 40,355 set by the Department of Basic Education (DBE) for 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The low number of learners taking maths puts a damper on the government’s plan to have 450,000 learners eligible to study maths and science at university by 2030<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2023, only 262,016 learners wrote maths, which is about 1,500 more than 2022, but a lot of work will need to be done in the next 7 years to meet the target. In 2023, a mere 6% of the entire matric class passed maths with 60%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pushing ahead<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

On a brighter note, since 2018 notably more girls than boys have passed the final matric maths and science exams. For the past 4 years, 3 out of 5 (~60%) of the learners in maths and science classes were girls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 2001, the DBE has encouraged girls to do maths, science and technology with support programmes, and promoting their participation in olympiads and competitions. Its efforts are paying off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018In 2022, for the first time, there were as many female as male achievers of a 60% mathematics mark,’ says Martin Gustafsson, an education economist from Stellenbosch University working at the DBE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Notebook<\/h3>\n\n\n\n