More South African pupils wrote the National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations in 2016 compared to 2017, the Department of Basic Education Director General Mathazima Mweli said during a briefing on Thursday night.
South Africa’s Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga will be announcing the NSC Examination pass rate for 2017 later on Thursday evening.
Mweli said that there were 347,096 female learners and only 282,059 male learners in the education system.
“Boy learners did better in matric and girl learners did better in all other grades,” he said.
The class of 2016 received a 72.5 percent pass rate which was an improvement from 2015’s 70.7 percent. This figure included so-called progressed learners, those who had failed Grade 11 twice and were moved onto Grade 12.
Mweli added that the amount of progressed learners had dropped from 108,742 to 107,430 in 2017.
“[The] highest number of bachelor’s degree passes was in KwaZulu-Natal with Gauteng being the second highest.”
A total of 634,814 full-time candidates sat for the 2017 NSC exams at 6,844 venues around South Africa in October, with KwaZulu-Natal having the highest number of candidates at 169,023 and Gauteng with 112,164.
– African News Agency (ANA
