The class of 2022 has been hailed for its resilience and for being the best class in SA history as it achieved an 80.1% pass rate despite a difficult three years of schooling due to the pandemic and increased blackouts.
The pass rate is an increase of 3.7% compared to the 76.4% attained in 2021, basic education minister Angie Motshekga said on Thursday night.
“This class was probably the worst affected out of all three classes affected by Covid-19. Covid-19 started in 2020 [when] the class of 2022 was in grade 10. When they were in grade 11, lockdown intensified and last year 2022 there was load-shedding,” said basic education director-general Mathanzima Mweli during the presentation of a technical report earlier in the day.
“Over 1,000 learners in Witbank couldn’t write maths literacy and mathematics exam on a particular day because their parents, elder brothers, relatives and neighbours decided they were going to block roads that were going to deliver their question papers to them.
“However, the data we have indicate this class could be one of the strongest classes we’ve ever had despite the fact they had the worst impact of the three classes,” Mweli said.
The 2022 class performance represents a record of 580,555 candidates who passed the National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations, an improvement of 7.9% passes by number achieved by the class of 2021.
The number of candidates qualifying for admission to bachelor studies at universities is 278, 814, an improvement of 8.9% from 2021. This means 38.4% of the total number of candidates who wrote exams for the NSC qualified to enter university.
“By the way, the 2022 bachelor passes in number are the highest attained in the entire history of the NSC examinations; but the second highest to that attained in 2021, when expressed as a percentage.
“It is important to remind the nation that for the past 10 years, the NSC pass rate has consistently been going up from 60% in 2009 to above 70% pass rates in recent years. The matric class of 2022 must be commended for maintaining this trend despite the astronomical challenges they faced...”
A total of 108,159 pupils achieved a higher certificate pass, making them eligible to study at technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges.
However, there was a fall in the number of distinctions in the Western Cape, Gauteng, North West, and Northern Cape and an improvement in KwaZulu-Natal.
Mathematics dropped from 57.6% in 2021 to 55% in 2022.
The Free State remains the country’s best performing province with a pass rate of 88.5%, followed by Gauteng with 84.4%, and KwaZulu-Natal at 83.0%.
The Western Cape achieved 81.4%, North West 79.8%, Eastern Cape 77.3%, Mpumalanga 76.8%, Northern Cape 74.2% and Limpopo 72.1%.
“All provinces have improved. We must state that KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng contributed the most bachelor passes, 69,849 — an increase of 12.9% from 2021; and 58,119 — an increase of 4.1% from 2021, respectively,” Motshekga said.
Mweli raised concern, saying SA could face a serious shortage of technical skills in the field of commerce as the number of matric pupils writing subjects in this category is showing a decline.
The report showed that the number of pupils enrolled for accounting increased from 95,864 in 2020 to 108,631 in 2021. However this figure declined to 107,239 in 2022.
Business studies underwent the same trend, increasing from 215,002 in 2020 to 250,918 in 2021. But it fell to 247,784 in 2022. Economics also surged from 123,471 in 2020 to 143,728 in 2021 and last year dropped to 141,208.
“Sooner rather than later we will be importing chartered accountants if we don’t encourage more learners to enrol in these subjects,” Mweli said.
There were 1.17 million pupils who enrolled for grade 1 in 2011.
However, only 1.083,190 were still in school and started matric in 2022.
Only 775,630 wrote matric exams at the end of the year. This means 307,560 pupils left the schooling system in the past 12 years.
Mweli said the decline began at grade 4 when pupils begin to learn subjects not in their home language.
In the class of 2021, 1.12-million pupils did grade 4 and in grade 5 over 30,000 pupils had left school with 1.09-million left.
The same happened last year with 1.11-million pupils in grade 4 and this decreased by over 25,000 to 1.08-million.
The report revealed that the total number of distinctions went up from 211,745 in 2021 to 218,770 in 2022.
Mweli said only four of the 75 districts were performing below 70%.
He said 42 of the 75 districts performed at 80% and above compared with 26 in 2021.
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