Gauteng achieved an 87 percent pass rate, bettering the province’s 2012 results of 83.9 percent by 3.1 percent.
However, the Free State claimed Gauteng’s position as top performing province in 2012 by achieving the highest provincial pass rate of 87.4 percent in 2013.
Motshekga highlighted that no individual district had performed below 50 percent, adding that Sedibeng in Gauteng was the top performing district with a 90.7 percent pass rate.
She said that there had been a significant improvement in the national results since 2009, which stood at 60.6 percent when she took over as minister.
She noted that the pass rate had increased steadily in the last four years and 2013’s results were the best since 1994.
The minister said that the maths results, which were generally lower than other subjects in the matric exams, were the best set of results in five years.
She said that the 2013 maths pass rate of 59.1 percent was 5.1 percent higher than 2012’s results.
The 2013 national exams were written by 562Â 112 pupils, which is the largest number to date.
According to the Department of Basic Education, 9.1 million matric exam papers had been printed and 8.7 million of these were marked.
Overall, matriculants achieved more than 67Â 000 distinctions and 551 schools achieved a 100 percent pass rate.
The rest of provincial pass rates are as follows: North West achieved 87.2 percent, Western Cape 85.1 percent, KwaZulu-Natal 77.4 percent, Mpumalanga 77.6 percent, Northern Cape 74.5 percent, Limpopo 71.8 percent and Eastern Cape 64.9 percent.
