As South African Grade 12s celebrate an 83,7% matric pass rate, Basic Education minister Siviwe Gwarube believes we need to do more to assist children in pre-school and foundational learning.
“While good progress has been made in expanding education access, we must turn our attention to improving the quality of the education that our learners receive,” she says. “Learners must leave our schools with an education and a qualification that allows them to pursue higher education opportunities or enter the job market in order to live lives of dignity.”
The minister cites international and local benchmarks showing that South African learners in Grades 5 to 9 significantly underperform in relation to their global counterparts in Mathematics, Science and reading.
“Put simply, this means that too many learners progress through the basic education system without mastering foundational skills, particularly in literacy and numeracy, which are critical for performing well in gateway subjects, like Mathematics and Physical Sciences,” she says. “These deficits accumulate over time, limiting learners’ abilities to succeed in higher grades and in these gateway subjects and diminishing their prospects of accessing further education and employment opportunities.
“This trend manifests itself in the decrease in enrolments in subjects, such as Physical Sciences, Mathematics, Accounting and Economics, which are all subjects that are critical for a nation’s ability to advance in science, innovation and economic development.”
Gwarube says the department is embarking on an urgent strategic reorientation of the system towards strengthening foundational learning, with provinces, districts and schools tasked with putting together plans to arrest the decline of enrolments in critical subjects.
“The systemic interventions that we will undertake in this regard include expanding access to quality Early Childhood Development (ECD) for learners before they enter the basic education system and improving the quality of teaching and learning in the Foundation Phase.”
In 2013, 1 222 851 learners started Grade 1. Of these learners, 724 156 enrolled as full-time candidates in Grade 12 in 2024. About 97% of these student wrote the NSC exams – the highest number since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Nearly half of the learners who wrote the NSC examinations received a Bachelor pass, with 47,8% of qualified for admission to Bachelor studies – a significant improvement from last year’s 40,9% and the highest number of Bachelor passes in recent history.
The Class of 2024 achieved an impressive 319 651 distinctions, an increase of over 65 000 distinctions from last year.
In 2024, 69,1% of learners passed Mathematics, increasing from 63,5% in 2023. In Physical Sciences, while 75,6% of learners passed, this is a decrease from 76,2% in 2023.
“The improvement in performance in Mathematics is encouraging,” Gwarube comments. “However, the decreasing participation rates in these key subjects, and the decrease in performance in Physical Sciences, highlight the urgent need to improve foundational literacy and numeracy to ensure that our schooling system produces learners who are confident and capable enough to choose and excel in Maths and Science subjects throughout their schooling career.”
Every province improved on its 2023 performance:
- Free State is the best performing province at 91%, increasing its pass rate from 89% in 2023.
- KwaZulu-Natal is at number two with a pass rate of 89,5%, marking an increase of 3,2 percentage poitns from 2023.
- Number three is Gauteng, which increased its pass rate from 85,4% in 2023 to 88,4% in 2024.
- North-West comes in at number four with 87,5%, which represents an increase of 5,9 percentage points from 2023.
- Number five is the Western Cape at 86,6%, which represents an increase of 5 percentage poitns from 2023.
- Limpopo comes in at number six, with a pass rate of 85,01%, an increase of 5,5 percentage points from 2023.
- Mpumalanga, with a pass rate of 84,99% is at number 7 – a significant increase of 8 percentage points from 2023.
- Eastern Cape achieved a pass rate of 84,98% and comes in at number 8 with a 3,6 percentage point increase from 2023.
- Northern Cape is at number 9 with 84,2%.