The North West Education Department is optimistic that the province will retain its position when the National Senior Certificate results are announced on Thursday.
The province came fourth after obtaining an 82.2% matric pass rate in 2016.
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga is expected to release the national results on Thursday evening.
Over 36 000 matriculants wrote the exams.
North West Education spokesperson Freddy Sepeng says, “We hope that this year our results will be very good but what I can tell you is that we pray hard to remain as one of the top four. Our teachers [and] our learners worked very hard because you will remember that we had holidays last year were our learners went for camps and we have been assisting them [with] study materials and again they were working overtime. Over the weekends they were attending classes.”
Meanwhile, the National Association of School Governing Bodies’ (NASGB) secretary-general Matakanye Matakanye has also expressed confidence that there will be an improvement in the results.
“Our expectation is that we will get better results this year because [during] the year we never had disruptions, disturbances [and] strike actions. We hope [that] we will get better results particularly [in] maths and science … our children did well in those subjects,” says Matakanye.
Click below to watch 2017 matric top achievers who have gathered in Johannesburg
