The Department of Basic Education (DBE) has published the matric results for the 2020 cohort, with the group achieving a pass rate of 76.2%.<\/p>\n
This is a drop of 5.1 percentage points compared to the 2019 matric pass rate (81.3%). A total of 607,226 candidates entered for the November 2020 NSC examination, while a total of 578,468 students sat and wrote the exams.<\/p>\n
Presenting the results on Monday (22 February), Basic Education minister Angie Motshekga said that despite the drop she was pleased with the results as she was expecting a ‘blood bath’\u00a0 due to the difficulties experience by learners in 2020.<\/p>\n
Chief amongst these was the Covid-19 lockdown which cut down on available teaching and learning time by almost a full term, she said.<\/p>\n
Students also faced the possibility of having to re-write their maths and science papers after the exams leaked early, giving rise to security concerns.<\/p>\n
“I am very happy that in the midst of all the difficulties we are able to stay at 76.2%, with more quality passes this year.”<\/p>\n
She added that more learners received more Bachelor Degree passes compared to last year’s cohort, while there\u00a0was a 13.1% increase in the number of distinctions that students achieved.<\/p>\n
The pass rates at a provincial level were as follows:<\/p>\n
Motshekga said that the national provincial pass rates are also partially skewed as they included ‘progresses learners’ who would not typically have written matric exams in a traditional school year.<\/p>\n
The matric examinations started on 5 November 2020 and the final papers were written on 15 December 2020.<\/p>\n
The later start, the Basic Education Department said, allowed schools and learners adequate time to cover the curriculum.<\/p>\n
Marking of the 2020 matric exams started on 4 January 2021 and involved 45,000 matric exam markers, 216 question papers, and over 10 million scripts.<\/p>\n
This was the seventh cohort of candidates to write the NSC examination that is aligned to the national Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS), a curriculum which is benchmarked against international standards.<\/p>\n