Gauteng’s 87.2% pass rate for the class of 2019 might be a stone’s throw away from the 90% target that the department had set, but the province can celebrate that out of the top 10 districts in the country, six were from this region.

District performance is just one assessment indicator that the Gauteng MEC for Education, Panyaza Lesufi, recognised as an achievement worth celebrating.

“We might have not been number one as a province, but we are number one province in everything that comes to education,” Lesufi said.

The MEC was speaking during Gauteng’s official matric results announcement ceremony in Randburg, Johannesburg on Wednesday 8 January, a day after the national results were announced by Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga.

Although the province has continued to fare well and maintain its 80% threshold, the 2019 results dropped by 0.7 percentage points, opening the way for Free State to lead with 88.4%.

“Even though the class of 2019 gave us an 87.2% pass, we are proud as a province because everything that is about quality assessment points to Gauteng,” said Lesufi.

The province also recorded the highest number of bachelor passes in the country, with 43,494 students obtaining bachelor passes out of the 97,829 that wrote the national senior certificate exams.

Vusi Austin Hendriks from Raymond Mhlaba Secondary School: Johannesburg West says he is proud of being a top candidate in physical science, even though he had to sacrifice playing soccer and chess. (Photo: Chanel Retief)

“The highest contributor of bachelor passes in the country is Gauteng. We are not only contributing to pass marks of our children, but our children are also receiving bachelor passes and it is the highest in the history of our province,” Lesufi said.

In the past, education experts and critics have frowned upon celebrating matric results without assessing the quality of the matric passes.

According to Lesufi, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) schools piloted in 2015 also managed to boost the overall results by 6%. The ICT program provides information and technology support to no-fee-paying schools in townships that were previously under-resourced.

The department recorded an 89.2% pass rate in schools located in townships while non-township schools achieved 92.61%, an indication that equality gaps between systematically disadvantaged schools and those that are advantaged are steadily shrinking.

The announcement of the results was succeeded by an awards ceremony to honour the province’s top learners and schools.

Siyayamthanda Prusent from Bhuulani Secondary School: Johannesburg central recieves the award for excellence in physical science. Prusent says that all the sacrifices he made ‘were worth it’. (Photo: Chanel Retief)

“I was mainly helped by a programme called Kutlwanong which deals with mathematics, science, and technology,” said Siyamthanda Prusent, a pupil from Bhukulani Secondary School in Johannesburg central.

“I also received a lot of support from my educators and the additional classes that they provided during the academic year,” he said.

Prusent won an award for excellence in physical science and a four-year bursary after an announcement by Lesufi that all top-performing learners in the province would be awarded the bursary to pursue the qualification they desired.

“I am planning to do actuarial science at the University of Witwatersrand because it is is closer to home and varsity needs a lot of emotional support. With family being far away that would be quite impossible,” said Prusent.

For the first time, the province has no schools that performed below 40% — however, Lesufi vowed to tackle schools which lagged behind.

“In the next few days the department will meet with the school management teams of all public schools that performed below 65% so that they can account for their poor performance,” he said. DM