Despite the matric cohort of 2022 achieving an 80.1% pass rate — an improvement of 3.7% over the 76.4% pass rate of 2021 — members of Parliament and Build One South Africa’s Mmusi Maimane have cautioned against celebrating quantity over quality.
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga, who has been at the helm of the Department of Basic Education for 14 years, on Thursday announced the results of the 2022 matric exam results.
She said the 80.1% pass rate achieved by the 2022 class represented a record of 580,555 candidates who had passed the 2022 National Senior Certificate exams.
“It should be noted that, while the pass rate in number of the class of 2022 is the highest in the history of the National Senior Certificate examinations, when the pass rate is expressed as a percentage, that of the class of 2019, which attained an 81.3% pass rate, stands out as the highest so far.”
The class of 2022 faced challenges including Covid-19 and Eskom’s rolling blackouts.
Pass rate of 80.1% ‘meaningless’
Build One South Africa’s Mmusi Maimane said that while he congratulated the class of 2022, the pass rate of 80.1% was meaningless.
“We are educating young people for unemployment. When you interrogate the numbers, 278,814 qualify to study towards the Bachelor’s degree. That is out of 775,000 — which means our Bachelor’s pass is below 35%. We have an education minister who is setting this country up for profound failure for young people.”
Maimane said the only positive was that the retention rate was decreasing, but more work needed to be done and vital interventions were needed.
“I would never want my child to leave school and they can’t use technology. When she [Motshekga] says they have done well under load shedding, I am not sure which child must leave school and when you show them a computer, they see it for the first time at university. We have prioritised quantity over quality.”
Actual pass rate ‘only 54.6%’
The DA’s shadow minister of basic education, Baxolile Nodada, said the real 2022 matric pass rate was only 54.6%, an increase from 2021’s 50.4%. Every year the DA calculates the matric pass rate by bringing into account the number of learners who dropped out and never made it to matric.
“This is very concerning,” he said. “Some learners opt out of schooling at the end of Grade 9 to pursue their education through technical and vocational education and training [TVET], but a large ...