Staff Reporter
The Free State is once again commanding the top spot in the National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations after recording an 85.7 percent pass rate for the 2021 academic year.
The province improved by 0.6 percentage points from 2020 when it achieved 85.1 percent.
This is the sixth time the province has come first since 2013 and the third consecutive lead since 2019.
Announcing the matric results on Thursday evening, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said the national pass rate improved by 0.2 percentage points to 76.4 percent, including progressed learners.
Without the progressed learners, the overall pass rate dropped by 0.2 percentage points to 79.8 percent.
“The Class of 2021 must be commended due to the astronomical challenges they faced,” said Motshekga.
She said the group was the ‘most impacted’ by the COVID-19 pandemic as it endured two years of disruptions to their learning programme.
They were not able to complete the Grade 11 syllabus when the pandemic hit in 2020.
Their catch-up efforts the following year suffered numerous setbacks as the lockdown continued.
This saw them adopting differentiated timetables, a trimmed curriculum, and more after-school programmes in a bid to minimise the spread of the disease.
The minister said at least 36.4 percent of the matric students qualified for university entry while 25.2 percent achieved a diploma pass and 14.8 percent got a higher certificate pass.
A total of 897 163 candidates sat to write the 2021 NSC examination – an increase of 23.6 percent from 2020.
There were 733 198 full-time students – the highest number of full-time candidates – and at least 163 967 part-timers who wrote the exams.
Meanwhile, Free State Premier Sisi Ntombela and Education MEC Tate Makgoe were scheduled to announce the provincial results this Friday morning at a special event happening at the Central University of Technology in Bloemfontein.
Learners who excelled in the exams will also be recognised for their hard work as well as some of the top performing schools.
This is how the provinces performed:
- Free State: 85.7%
- Gauteng: 82.8%
- Western Cape: 81.2%
- North West: 78.2%
- KZN: 76.8%
- Mpumalanga: 73.6%
- Eastern Cape: 73%
- Northern Cape: 71.4%
- Limpopo: 66.7%