By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has congratulated the class of 2022 on their exam results amid various challenges, including two years of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga on Thursday announced that the Matric Class of 2022 has scored a remarkable 80.1% pass rate, which marks the second highest since 2019.
Ramaphosa said that the Class of 2022 deserves the congratulations and respect of the nation for rising above the challenges of COVID-19, load shedding and a period of unrest.
“We must all work together to build a society where learners are not measured only by their resilience in testing times but where they can fulfil their potential in conducive conditions.
“The Class of 2022 has through its commendable performance made our future more hopeful; a future in which this generation of young South Africans will take our country to new heights.
“As much as we celebrate individual achievement, the Class of 2022 also constitutes a pass for our education system; it vindicates the extensive and unwavering investment we have made in education during nearly 30 years of freedom,” the President said.
Ramaphosa said that the country owes the achievements of 2022 to the diligence of learners alongside the commitment and support of teachers, who also endured the challenges of the year, as well as education officials.
“For the relatively small proportion of unsuccessful candidates, this is not the end of the road; you can pick yourself up and take advantage of a number of options that will empower you to continue your journey to success,” he said.
However, the department’s official pass rate does not factor in South Africa’s worryingly high drop-out rate, with the opposition party the Democratic Alliance reporting that the dropout rate for the class of 2022 was 31.8%.
In other words, 336,364 learners that would have been part of the class of 2022 were not, bringing the ‘real’ pass rate down significantly to 54.6%.
“Every year, the DA calculates the real matric pass rate by bringing into account the number of learners that dropped out and never made it to matric. 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 number simply stop their education entirely,” the DA said.
“To bring the TVET learners into account the DA calculates the real matric pass rate from the grade 10 cohort that ought to complete matric.”
The ‘real’ 2022 matric pass rate is only 54.6%, and is an increase from 2021’s 50.4%, but remains very concerning, the party said.
“What makes the national 45.4% fail rate and high dropout rate particularly concerning is that many of those learners contribute to the country’s staggering youth unemployment of 59.6% – a little over 3.5 million youth are not in education, employment or any form of skills training,” the DA said.
“Given the fact that the Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, recently revealed in an answer to a parliamentary question from the DA that her Department has not established a system of tracking learners that exit the public schooling system and does not have information regarding learners’ further education or employment paths in line with outcome 3 and 4 of the Medium-Term Strategic Framework of DBE, means a high likelihood of learners joining the unemployment lines once they leave school, whether through dropping out or after graduation.”
Motshekga also admitted South Africa’s international rankings suggest that, currently, an even larger problem than dropping out is the levels of skills among youths who do succeed in obtaining the National Senior Certificate.”
“Considering that the pass mark in some subjects is as low as 30%, only 38.4 % of matrics achieved a Bachelor’s degree pass – a shockingly low number when compared to the Independent Examination Board (IEB) Bachelor’s degree passes of 89.32%. In fact, all IEB candidates who passed (98.42%) qualified for entry to tertiary education,” the DA said.