Basic education minister Angie Motshekga will on Thursday announce the matric results for the Class of 2023. [Picture: MDN News/Twitter]
The start of the year has come to be dominated by animated discussions within households about matric results. In public, researchers and experts are keen to use the results to gauge the education system in South Africa.
On Thursday, basic education minister Angie Motshekga is expected to announce the official pass rate for the matric class of 2023. Some 900 000 students sat for the National Senior Certificate (NSC) examination in November. Their forerunners, the Class of 2022, produced an 80.1% pass rate.
“On the one hand,” said Prof. Labby Ramrathan from the School of Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), “it measures the health of the education sector, to explore and understand how education has been provided in this country.”
But it is also a time when matriculants mull their options for the next phase in their life ahead, he said. “On the other hand, learners and parents are anxious about the matric results because matric results give you access to a whole range of things.”
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Limited access to higher education
Depending on how one interprets the pass rate, said Ramrathan, the system either shines or comes under scrutiny for the quality of the results. He was of the view that it was “robust”, despite challenges in the system.
“If you take the cohort of learners that entered Grade 0, over a 12 year period, almost half of them are not in matric. Some of them have left, others are held back because of various reasons like health issues, failures and so forth.”
Acknowledging that access to higher education at public universities was “limited”, he encouraged school-leaving learners to explore other options. Some of those might be outside of the education sphere.
“We really need to harness our own skills, our own talents, our own interests [and] our own passions. There are a range of opportunities that are available, where you can take short courses, you can take internships and you can even volunteer your services to different companies.”
However, he noted that the education system was “guiding students towards higher education”, and therefore “access to opportunities within the post-school education system is at this point the crux of the matter”.
Many education activists, NGO’s and experts will keenly watch the results announcement, just as matric learners themselves are expected to do, when Motshekga announces the pass rate at an official ceremony in Johannesburg on Thursday.
Students attending online schools accredited by the South African Comprehensive Assessment Institute (SACAI) received their results on Wednesday, registering an overall 72% pass rate. Similarly, the Independent Assessment Board (IEB), catering for private schools, announced a 98.46% pass rate on Thursday.
