The DA congratulates all matric candidates who receive their results today. Unfortunately, we must also confront a shocking truth: the real matric pass rate is 37.6% if you include the number of 2016 Grade 10s who actually passed matric in 2018.
These Grade 10s should be celebrating with other matriculants, but more than half didn’t write matric in the expected timeframe. This means only 37.6% of these Grade 10s passed matric. The others have either become stuck in a struggling education system repeating grades, or worse, dropped out of the system completely.
The ‘real’ matric pass rate for each province reveals a devastating reality: only the Western Cape managed to keep over 65% of its 2016 Grade 10s in school and through to writing matric on time.
| Class of 2018 | ||||||
| Province | Gr 10 (2016) | Wrote NSC (2018) | % Grade 10 (2016) who wrote NSC | Passed NSC | Passed NSC (%) | ‘Real’ pass rate (%) |
| Eastern Cape | 148 346 | 65 733 | 44.3 | 46 393 | 70.6 | 31.3 |
| Free State | 61 244 | 24 914 | 40.7 | 21 806 | 87.5 | 35.6 |
| Gauteng | 172 507 | 94 870 | 55.0 | 83 406 | 87.9 | 48.3 |
| KwaZulu-Natal | 243 935 | 116 152 | 47.6 | 88 485 | 76.2 | 36.3 |
| Limpopo | 184 028 | 76 730 | 41.7 | 53 254 | 69.4 | 28.9 |
| Mpumalanga | 90 201 | 44 612 | 49.5 | 35 225 | 79.0 | 39.1 |
| North West | 66 550 | 29 061 | 43.7 | 23 578 | 81.1 | 35.4 |
| Northern Cape | 23 082 | 9 909 | 42.9 | 7 264 | 73.3 | 31.5 |
| Western Cape | 77 182 | 50 754 | 65.8 | 41 350 | 81.5 | 53.6 |
| National | 1 067 075 | 512 735 | 48.1 | 400 761 | 78.2 | 37.6 |
The celebrations by the Gauteng and Free State MECs is a slap in the face to the learners they failed to serve along the way. In Gauteng, 45% of its Grade 10s in 2016 didn’t write matric.
The Free State, with the highest drop out in the country, has a well-known reputation for ‘culling’, or intentionally keeping back learners to inflate pass marks, as confirmed by a Deputy Director-General of the Department of Basic Education (DBE) in 2017. The DA has repeatedly called for a national investigation into ‘culling’, but Minister Angie Motshekga is not concerned.
A new worry is the Multiple Exam Opportunity (MEO), which some provinces have relied on more heavily than others. It is not clear how many of these learners will actually return to complete their exams in June 2019, and many could be lost from the system in the interests of inflating provincial pass rates.
The DA’s priority is clear: to ensure that learners get the best quality matric in the expected time frame, so that they can start their journey into further education and employment on time and in good stead. It is only through this commitment to quality education that learners will be able to break the cycle of poverty that so many young South Africans have been left trapped in by a failing ANC government.