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The matric pass rate has dropped from 75.8% last year to 70.7% this year.
Announcing the results at Vodaworld in Midrand, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said: “For the past four years, the pass rate has been over 70%. The class of 2015 must be commended for maintaining this trend. They are the largest cohort in the history of basic education in this country.”
Of the 667 925 pupils who sat for the matric exams last year, 455 825 passed. The Western Cape outperformed the other provinces, followed by Gauteng, achieving 84.7% and 84.2% respectively.
Motshekga said: “The top performing province for 2015 is the Western Cape, which achieved 84.7%, up from 82.2% in 2014 – an improvement of 2.5%. The Western Cape had 53 721 candidates in total, out of which 22 739 are bachelor [university entrance] passes. Well done to MEC [Debbie] Schäfer and her team”.
The class of 2015 was the second group to write the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement in matric. Motshekga said that “CAPS is a high knowledge curriculum. It places a premium on cognitive demands from learners.”
CAPS emphasises subject content and assessment as the centrepiece of curriculum implementation, she said, adding that pupils, teachers, markers, chief markers, internal moderators, subject analysts, and curriculum specialists observed that this year's question papers were different from those in previous years.
“We have taken a conscious decision to raise the standard and to improve the quality of our education, consistent with the objectives of the CAPS curriculum. The question papers bore the true hallmark of the curriculum, underpinning the provision of quality education - which the South African nation has been yearning for all these years. In future, learners will be expected to use their analytical and critical thinking skills, problem solving and innovation,” Motshekga said.
Provincial performance
Free State: 81.6%
North West: 81.5%
Mpumalanga: 78.6%
Limpopo: 65.9%
KwaZulu-Natal: 60.7%
Eastern Cape: 56%
Northern Cape: 69.4%
