{"id":90102,"date":"2025-01-19T19:05:45","date_gmt":"2025-01-19T19:05:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/?p=90102"},"modified":"2025-11-17T17:38:22","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T17:38:22","slug":"matric-2024-the-highlights-most-arent-talking-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/2025\/01\/19\/matric-2024-the-highlights-most-arent-talking-about\/","title":{"rendered":"Matric 2024 results: Our highlights"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Laura Grant<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot has been written about the 2024 matric exam results so rather than rehashing the same information I looked through the results to see what \u2018sparks of joy\u2019 I could find other than the overall pass rate of 87.2%<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bachelor passes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Take the number of bachelor passes, for instance. More than 330,000 learners passed their exams well enough to apply to study at a university. What that means is nearly half of 2024\u2019s grade 12s (47.8%) got the highest-level pass, aka, a bachelor pass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Girls are steaming ahead of boys with 49.2% of them earning bachelor passes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Girls have outnumbered boys in grade 12 classrooms for at least the past four years. Since 2021 about 56% of learners were girls, so it\u2019s little wonder that more girls earned bachelor passes in 2024 than boys – 51,000 more, if you want put a number on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Education experts have expressed concern about the disparity in numbers<\/a> between boys and girls in grade 12 because it\u2019s a sign that boys may be struggling in the education system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More girls than boys<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To quote our new minister of basic education, Siviwe Gwarube, \u201cThe National Senior Certificate is not just a certificate \u2013 it is a gateway to opportunities that empower our young people to pursue further education, enter the workforce and contribute to the socio-economic development of South Africa.\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A recent StatsSA earnings report<\/a> shows that a tertiary education can have a big influence on the money a person earns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are, no doubt, still many anxious young women and men waiting to hear if they have a place at a university this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My second spark of joy<\/strong> is from the increase in the number of learners who passed maths with 60% or more in 2024. This is a requirement for anyone wanting to do a science, engineering or technology degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The government set a target of 35,000 people getting 60% for maths a year by 2024. The 2023 matrics were the first group to exceed that target and the class of 2024 has done even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same target was set for physical science, but things took a turn for the worse there in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spark of joy three<\/strong> came from digging around in the school subject report the Department of Basic Education publishes. This lists every school, how many learners wrote the matric exams, how many wrote maths and how many passed maths, among other things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I was interested to see which are the schools where learners wrote the maths exams and, of course, whether they passed. So I worked out what percentage of the total learners at each school wrote maths and passed (with 30% or more because that\u2019s the only information in the report).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report also lists the quintile of each school. There are five quintiles and they basically represent socioeconomic categories, so schools in quintiles 1 to 3 are usually in lower-income areas and parents don\u2019t have to pay schools fees. Schools in quintiles 4 and 5 tend to be in more affluent areas and parents pay school fees. The schools in the 99 category are generally independent schools where learners wrote the national senior certificate exams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The quintile 5 schools in the Western Cape stood out. But I suppose that\u2019s what I expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I was really happy to see was how many schools in quintiles 1 to 3 were listed as having children writing and passing the maths exams. A few had 100% of their matrics writing maths and passing. KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga stood out in this regard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":90104,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1321,1387],"tags":[1335,1327,490,489,59,981,176,140,492,1334,494,1333,142],"newsletter-post":[],"site":[],"class_list":["post-90102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-freelogin","category-the-outlier","tag-bachelor-passes","tag-class-of-2024","tag-dbe","tag-department-of-basic-education","tag-education","tag-gender-gap","tag-grade-12","tag-maths","tag-national-senior-certificate","tag-no-fee-paying-schools","tag-nsc","tag-quintiles","tag-science"],"acf":{"post_style":"bc","show_on_front":"Yes","link_through":"Yes","big_number":"","big_number_caption":"","big_number_link":"","big_number_background":"","big_number_text_colour":"#000000","big_number_icon":false,"big_number_wide":"yes","featured_chart":false,"flourish_chart_id":"","flourish_sub_title":"","flourish_chart_width":"medium","is_newsletter_post":"No","chart_url":"","background_colour":"#0089AA","text_colour":"#FFFFFF"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90102"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90121,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90102\/revisions\/90121"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90102"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-post?post=90102"},{"taxonomy":"site","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/site?post=90102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}