The Matric of 2023 overcame enormous challenges, and their achievement is a reflection of their effort and dedication, as well as the level of assistance provided by their families, instructors, and the Department of Basic Education.
Minister Angie Motshekga said so at the ministerial release of the 2023 NSC results, where she also discussed the improvement in the education sector over the last 30 years, child and adult literacy, and opportunities available to the 82.9% of learners who passed, which is the second highest pass rate in South Africa’s democratic history in terms of the number of candidates but the highest as a percentage.
The 2023 NSC overall pass rate reached the 82.9% mark compared with 80.1% in 2022 and 76.4% in 2021, an improvement of 2.8% and 6.5% from the pass rates achieved by the classes of 2022 and 2021, respectively. This represents 572,983 candidates who passed the 2023 NSC exams.
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Though the pass rate of the exams in number is the second highest in the history of the NSC exams, when expressed as a percentage, the pass rate of the 2023 NSC exams is the highest in SA’s democratic history.
Similarly, bachelor passes as well as passes with distinction produced by the Class of 2023 stand out as the highest in the history of NSC exams.
In 2023, a total of 253,807 distinctions were achieved. The main contributors towards passes with distinctions were KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, the Eastern Cape, the Western Cape, and Limpopo.
- The Free State is the leading province at 89.0%, an increase of 0.5% from 2022.
- KwaZulu-Natal, the third-best improved province, achieved 86.4%, an increase of 3.4% from 2022.
- Gauteng achieved 85.4%, an increase of 1.0% from 2022.
- North West achieved 81.6%, an increase of 1.8% from 2022.
- Western Cape achieved 81.5%, an increase of 0.1% from 2022.
- The second-best-improved province is the Eastern Cape, with an achievement of 81.4%, an improvement of 4.1% from 2022.
- The best-improved province is Limpopo, with an achievement of 79.5%, a 7.4% improvement from 2022.
- Mpumalanga achieved 77.0%, a 0.2% increase from 2022.
- Northern Cape achieved 75.8%, a 1.6% increase from 2022.
None of the provinces performed below the 75% pass rate; and none had a decline when their 2023 NSC exam results were compared with those of the previous year.
Motshekga quoted the National Development Plan as saying, “By 2030, South Africans should have access to education and training of the highest quality leading to significantly improved learners outcomes and the performance of South African learners in international standardized tests should be comparable to the performance of learners from countries at a similar level of development within similar levels of access.
“Government has continuously and consistently implemented policies, programs, and interventions which demonstrate the commitment to expand and enhance basic education through the implementation of social justice principles.
“Even the [financial] allocation that government gives to basic education does confirm this commitment. We can quickly say, for instance, from the recent Stats South Africa studies we are told that the number of five-year-olds that attend ECD centres which stood at 40% in 2002 to 90% in 2021.
“Over 98% of learners, who are 7 to 15 years of age, have been attending educational institutions since 2009, signaling near universal attendance rates for compulsory education in South Africa.
“Despite starting from a relatively low base, the quality of learning outcomes has shown consistent improvement. South Africa has been one of the fastest-improving countries in international standardized assessments.”
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