There was an increase in the number of pupils who passed mathematics from 53.6% in 2020 to 57.6% in 2021, and the majority of those who sat for new technical subjects also passed, a move praised by the department of basic education.
This was revealed by basic education director-general DG Mathanzima Mweli on Thursday when he presented his technical report.
“There was no upward adjustments. It was just raw marks from the script of our young people,” Mweli said.
A total of 13,403 pupils sat to write technical mathematics and a 60.1% pass was achieved. Technical science had 14,642 `pupils who achieved a 87.1% pass.
The 4,474 pupils who sat for the civil technology (construction) raked in the highest pass of 98.5%. while the 2,366 pupils who wrote civil technology (woodwork) attained a 97% pass.
“This is the area where we need to focus more as a country... if we want to compete with Germany, Asian Tigers, this is the area. We really need to take this message to our parents and the general public that it has to be cool for our young people to enrol in technical subjects,” said Mweli.
The report revealed that the total number of distinctions dropped from 4.3% to 4.2%. There was a fall in the number of distinctions in the Free State, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, North West, Northern Cape and an improvement in the Western Cape.
“This class had their vacation shortened to allow for more time for teaching and learning. Half yearly exams, quarterly exams were cancelled to give way to teaching and learning... They went through a trimmed curriculum.
“The weighting of exams got decreased from 75% to 40%. They were taught on a rotational system. These attributes are cardinal in interpreting the performance of the class of 2021,” he said.
A total of seven districts improved from 60% to 69% to 70% to 79%.
Accounting dropped from 75.5% last year to 74.7% while economics also fell from 68.8% pass to 67.8% pass along with Geography, which dropped from 99.2% to 74.3% pass. However, History shot up from 75.3% to 89.5%.
Agricultural sciences increased from 72.7% to 75.4% together with Business Studies, which achieved 80.5% from 77.9% the previous year. Physical Sciences also improved from 65.8% to 69% this year. Life Sciences slightly increased from 71% to 71.5%.
Passes at Life Orientation remained high, increasing from 99.4% to 99.8%.
A total of 577,972 pupils on the social grant system wrote the exams. Of this figure, 106,311 were still receiving grants when they wrote exams while 471,661 were no longer receiving the grant because of their age.
“Those that are still recipients seem to perform better than those that are no longer receiving the grant. We want social scientist to investigate this and confirm our anecdotal evidence,” Mweli said.
Performance in some of the home languages was also high. About 99.9% of pupils who wrote IsiNdebele passed. A similar performance was achieved in Tshivenda.
IsiXhosa also increased from 99.7% to 99.7% and so did IsiZulu from 99% to 99.2%. Afrikaans, English, Sepedi, SeSwati, Sign Language and Xitsonga registered decreases but all remained above 90%.
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