Matric pass rate drops to 70.7%
The 2015 matric exam national pass rate has dropped to 70.7%, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said on Tuesday.
This was down from 75.8% achieved in 2014, she said at the release of the results in Midrand, Johannesburg.
If so-called “progressed learners” had not been added to the total, the pass rate would have been 74%.
These were pupils who failed Grade 11 twice and were promoted to Grade 12 without meeting the passing criteria.
The Western Cape was the best performing province in the 2015 National Senior Certificate exams with an 84.7% pass rate.
Gauteng was close on its heels with an 84.2% pass rate.
The Free State was the third-best performing province with an 81.6% pass rate, followed by North West with 81.5%.
Next was Mpumalanga with 78.6%, the Northern Cape with 69.4%, Limpopo with 65.9%, and KwaZulu-Natal with 60.7%.
The worst performing province was the Eastern Cape with a pass rate of 56.8%.
Motshekga said the three worst performing provinces – also the country’s three biggest rural provinces – caused a 9% drop in the pass rate. They had 53% of the country’s pupils.
Basic Education Director General Mathanzima Mweli said the largest number of candidates came from KwaZulu-Natal, followed by Gauteng and Limpopo.
All results, except those for Western Cape, will go live on the department’s website from 6am on Wednesday – www.dbe.gov.za.
A total of 674,232 full-time and 127,456 part-time matric candidates enrolled to write.
Schools in all provinces, except the Western Cape, will open at 08:00 for pupils to fetch results and collect their National Senior Certificate.
Pupils in Western Cape would have to wait longer than the rest of the country, and would be able to collect their results at schools from noon on January 6, and online from 14:00 of the same day.
Spokesperson Jessica Shelver said this was so that school principals could analyse the results and check for any discrepancies.
This means that the Western Cape’s results would not be online with the rest of the country at midnight on Tuesday.
They would be online from 14:00 on Wednesday on http://www.westerncape.gov.za/service/examination-information-and-results.
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