Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News, 2015-01-05

The Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga announced on Monday that the matric 2014 national pass rate has dropped to 75.8%.

The pass rate decreased by 2.4% from 2013’s figure of 78.2%.

She also declared the process “free and credible” during a briefing in Auckland Park, Johannesburg.

Gauteng was the best performing province with a pass rate of 84.7 percent, but it is down from 87% in 2013 followed by the North West in second with 84.6 percent.

The worst performing province was the Eastern Cape, which got 65.4%, an improvement of 0.5% points in comparison to 2013.

KwaZulu-Natal saw the largest decline in the pass rate with a drop of 7.7 percent. The province got a 69.7 percent from 77.4% in 2013.

More than 700,000 students wrote the final exams and 551 schools received 100 percent matric pass rates.

Motshekga applauded the education districts for their excellent performance in the 2014 matric exams.

“However, there is still much more work that needs to be done,” she said.

Motshekga said the drop in the national pass rate cannot be attributed to grade 11s who were promoted to matric without passing the grade.

“We were tracking what the impact of that policy was and it’s encouraging that some of the learners who failed grade 11 attained a national senior certificate and some even attained a bachelor pass.”

The provincial results are as follows:

Eastern Cape: 65.4% from 64.9%

KwaZulu-Natal: 69.7% down from 77.4%

Limpopo: 72.9 up from 71.8%

Northern Cape: 76.4% from 74.5%

Mpumalanga: 79% from 77.6%

Western Cape: 82.8% down from 85.1%

Gauteng: 84.7 down from 87%

North West: 84.6% down from 87.2%

Free State: 82.3 down from 87.4%

Grade 12 pupils can access their matric results from early tomorrow morning, collect them from their schools or look them up in newspapers.

(Twitter: @Faizie143)