None of the nine provinces have recorded a decline in the 2023 matric results compared to the previous year. This was announced by Minister of Education Angie Motshekga at the National Senior Certificate matric result announcement in Johannesburg on Thursday evening, noting that no province had received a pass rate of under 75%.
“More heartening and encouraging, is the very small percentage gap pass rates attained by provinces. For instance, there is a 1% pass rate gap between KZN and Gauteng; while the North West, Western Cape and the Eastern Cape differ with 0.1%,” says Motshekga.
She says the slight differences indicates growth across the board in the education system “so that we do not misrepresent our provinces, districts and schools, as centres of dysfunctionality”.
The Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng have been announced the three best performing provinces with Mpumalanga and the Northern Cape as the lowest performing provinces despite both showing increases of 0.2% and 1.6%, respectively.
At 89.093%, the Free State has been announced at the best performing province, followed by KwaZulu-Natal at 86.4% with an increase of 3.4 percentage points from the previous year, while Gauteng got 85.4% in an increase of 1.0 percentage point from the previous year.
The North West took fourth position at 81.6%, followed by the Western Cape at 81.5% and the second best improved province, Eastern Cape at 81.4% following by the most improved province, Limpopo at 79.5%.
Motshekga says the class of 2023 must be commended for maintaining the trend of improvement despite the challenges they faced.
“The 2023 NSC overall pass rate has reached the 82.9% mark (compared with 80.1% in 2022, and 76.4% in 2021) – an improvement of 2.8 percentage points. This represents 572 983 candidates, who passed the 2023 NSC exams,” says Motshekga.
