The matric class of 2022 achieved a pass rate of 80.1% in their final examinations, a 3.7% improvement from 76.4% the previous year.
Speaking during an address to the nation on 19 January 2023, basic education minister Angie Motshekga said the 2022 cohort was the most resilient yet, facing pandemic challenges and load shedding.
She said the increase to 80.1% marks was the second highest since 2019.
For the past 10 years, the National Senior Certificate (NSC) pass rate has been going up from 60% in 2009, and the class of 2022 has maintained this trend despite all the challenges they faced.
Almost 40% of all 2022 matric students qualified for admission to study towards a bachelor’s degree, a staggering improvement of 8.9% from 2021.
“The number of candidates qualifying for admission to bachelor studies at universities, is 278,814,” said Motshekga.
“By the way, the 2022 bachelor passes in numbers, are the highest attained in the entire history of the National Senior Certificate Examinations, but the second highest to that attained in 2021, when expressed as a percentage,” she said.
Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal contributed to most bachelor passes, she added.
Out of the 2022 matric class, 278,815 students achieved a bachelor’s pass, 197,357 (26.7%) achieved a diploma pass, and 108,159 (14.9%) achieved a higher certificate pass. This class faced significant challenges due to the Covid-19 pandemic, starting in their grade 10 year in 2010.
Motshekga announced the matric pass rates for South Africa’s nine provinces as follows:
- Free State- 88.5%
- Gauteng- 84.4%
- KwaZulu-Natal- 83%
- Western Cape- 81.4%
- North West- 79.8%
- Eastern Cape- 77.3%
- Mpumalanga- 77.8%
- Northern Cape- 74.2%
- Limpopo- 72.1%
The pandemic disrupted learning and delayed the release of the matric results. The outcome of the exams for the class of 2022 was only released nearly two months into the new year, on 23 February 2021.
On Thursday, the basic education minister noted that pupils in KwaZulu-Natal also had to contend with the effects of devastating floods which hit the province in April last year.
Source: News24, IOL, Business Tech, Mail&Guardian, image from Twitter: @SAgovnews