APA-Pretoria (South Africa) South Africa’s Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga has announced that 82.9 percent of the over 890,000 high school-leaving students who wrote their final year examinations last year passed and can proceed to university.
Presenting the 2023 National Senior Certificate (NSC) examination results in Johannesburg on Thursday, Motshekga said 572,983 candidates passed, with Free State province leading at 89 percent pass rate – up 0.5 percentage points from 2022.
“The Class of 2023’s achievement is an improvement of 2.8 and 6.5 percent from the pass rates achieved by the Classes of 2022 and 2021, respectively,” Motshekga said.
She noted that while the pass rate of the 2023 NSC exams in numbers was the second highest in the history of the NSC exams, it was the highest in the history of the organisation when expressed in percentage terms.
The minister said the Class of 2023 defied “astronomical challenges” that included the COVID-19 pandemic during their high school years to reach this milestone.
“There is no doubt that the basic education system has begun to reach the desired stability which is healthy for a large and important system as ours,” the minister said.
NM/jn/APA