The results of the 2021 Matric exams have finally been released and, while students look over their marks to determine their next moves, it’s important to determine the performance of the country as a whole.
A few select subjects usually receive the most scrutiny, especially those that can be classified as falling under the umbrella of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
To that end the Department of Basic Education (DBE) has released a “Report Card” which acts as a summary of the results. This Report Card can be downloaded as a PDF from the DBE website here.
When it comes to STEM it’s this table that we want to pay attention to:
This table shows us the results not just for 2021, but also 2020 for the sake of comparison.
As Mathematics and Physical Sciences are so often discussed as a lightning rod for overall Matric performance, it’s best to start there.
For Mathematics there has been a significant increase from 65.8 percent in 2020 to 69 percent in 2021. This huge step up is kneecapped somewhat by the fact that the pass rate for Physical Science has dropped slightly from 75.5 percent in 2020 to 74.7 percent in 2021.
When comparing these numbers several factors should be considered such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which continues to make schooling difficult and the number of students who sat to write these exams.
As you can see in the table below every single key subject had many more students in 2021 with some even tens of thousands greater.
Angie Motshekga, the Minister of Basic Education, makes specific mention of COVID-19 and the higher student count in the report.
“The COVID‐19 pandemic further highlighted the urgency for the sector to migrate from manual and paper‐based systems to the use of hybrid and blended Information and Communications Technology (ICT) platforms. The WOZA Matrics 2021 Catch-Up Programme and the Tswelopele Campaigns were important initiatives established by the DBE, to support the Class of 2021,” Motshekga writes.
“The Class of 2021 had a number of success stories. There was a significant increase in the number of full-time enrolments in 2021 increasing from 610 484 in 2020 to 733 917 in 2021,” the minister adds.
Continuing the story of success here is the much-maligned Mathematics Literacy which also saw an improvement from 53.8 percent pass rate in 2020 to 57.6 percent in 2021.
For those who would like to see more of the Matic progress in STEM see our coverage of the 2020 results which also compares pass rates right back to 2016.
[Image | Source – DBE]
