Gauteng province has emerged as the top-performing province in the 2014 matric results, attaining a pass rate of 84.7%, even though this is a drop from the 87% of the previous year.
Eastern Cape performed the worst, with 65.4% of its pupils passing. In KwaZulu-Natal, 69.7% of pupils passed.
Both of these provinces were implicated in a block-cheating scandal at exam centres.
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said yesterday that results verification had shown that the number of centres at which cheating took place was lower than first thought.
There were 58 exam centres at which cheating was suspected, and 44 centres are still being investigated, but 14 centres have been cleared of irregular activity.
Motshekga said the department hoped to finalise the investigation by the end of this month so that pupils who had not cheated “could get on with their life”.
SA Democratic Teachers’ Union general secretary Mugwena Maluleke said that although cheaters should “be brought to book” it was the education system that was to blame.
“Our education system is focused on quantity instead of quality and this inherently puts teachers into an uncomfortable corner, subjected to undue pressure,” he said.
The top-performing province of 2013, the Free State, managed a pass rate of 82.8%, slipping 4.6%. Western Cape’s pass mark was 82.2%.
Although the province with the highest number of candidates qualifying for university entrance is Gauteng, at 36843, Western Cape achieved the highest percentage of pupils, with 47.2% of those who passed attaining university passes.
In Gauteng, 36843 pupils got university passes and 35724 in KwaZulu-Natal.
North West got an 84.6% pass rate, Northern Cape 76.4%, Mpumalanga 79% and Limpopo 72.9%.
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