South Africa’s matric pass rate is 80.1%

3 years ago 2

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South Africa’s official matric pass rate for 2022 is 80.1%, an increase from the 76.4% pass rate of 2021.

Basic education minister Angie Motshekga announced the results on Thursday, 19 January 2022.

Education department director-general Hubert Mathanzima Mweli announced in an earlier technical briefing that 834,565 students wrote the 2022 National Senior Certificate exams this year.

Of these, around 87% (725,146) were full-time candidates.

Motshekga said 922,034 matrics registered to take the exams this year.

Motshekga said 278,815 matrics achieved a bachelor’s pass, 197,357 (26.7%) achieved a diploma pass, and 14.9% (108,159) achieved a higher certificate pass.

The class of 2022 is the matric group that faced the brunt of the Covid–19 pandemic, beginning with their grade 10 year in 2020.

Although South Africa’s most stringent lockdown measures were lifted by the end of 2021, it only exited its state of disaster in March 2022.

Students wrote their first 2022 matric examinations on 31 October, and the last exam was scheduled for 7 December.

Education quality council Umalusi revealed this week said some irregularities were detected during writing and marking, but these were not systemic and did not compromise the overall credibility and integrity of the exams.

Where irregularities were found, Umalusi instructed the Department of Basic Education (DBE) to block the results of those candidates.

This includes candidates implicated in alleged acts of dishonesty, pending the outcome of the DBE investigations and verification by Umalusi.

Umalusi apologised for errors found in question papers, stating that such errors cannot be justified and are regrettable.

“Umalusi wishes to apologise profusely for these errors in question papers,” said CEO Dr Mafu Rakometsi.

“The South African public must find comfort in the fact that Umalusi, as a Quality Council, has tried and tested methods to remedy the situation, where such unfortunate errors are detected late in the question paper,” he said.

“Our tried and tested approaches ensure that no learner is disadvantaged by the error in the question paper. Mitigating measures are implemented either during marking or during the standardisation meetings.”