Department of Basic Education Director-General (DG) Hubert Mweli has attributed the achievements of the matric Class of 2023 to the “extraordinary support” the learners received throughout the year.
The DG was speaking during a technical briefing ahead of the announcement of the National Senior Certificate (NSC) results held at the Mosaïek in Johannesburg on Thursday.
The Class of 2023, with more than 890 000 full-time and part-time candidates, produced a pass rate of some 82.9% - the highest in percentage points in the history of the NSC.
“This class has been provided with extraordinary support. The reality is that we are an unequal society. We still remain an unequal society. When others have got a number of tutors lined up for them, learners in the villages, in the townships, in the informal settlements…the only expert they rely on is the teacher.
“In South Africa, our government – across all the nine provinces – provides comprehensive support to our learners. This support does not begin in Grade 12, it starts from the foundation phase.”
Mweli explained that the Learner Support Programmes for the matriculants this year had distinct features. These included:
- A strong partnership with civil society, universities and non-governmental organisations and donors.
- Weekend, autumn, winter, spring, and last push learner support programme to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 in all nine provinces.
- The Learner Support Programme focused on Languages (Home Languages, African Languages, South African Sign Language including Afrikaans and English, as well as First Additional Languages).
- The Electrical, Mechanical, Civil Technologies specialisations received attention during the implementation of the Learner Support Programme.
- Smaller subjects such as services subjects (Hospitality, Consumer Studies, and Tourism) were also included in the 2023 Learner Support Programme.
- Mathematics received unprecedented attention in all the 75 education districts. The year 2023 was declared the year of Mathematics and regular meetings were convened with the Mathematics Curriculum convenors in each of the provinces.
- Face to face engagements were held with the 25 000 school principals, district, provincial officials focusing on the improvement of learning outcome.
“We even followed through in our support. We actioned research, we checked the impact, we tracked learner performance on a monthly basis and on a quarterly basis to determine whether there is any impact in terms of the support that has been provided,” he said. – SAnews.gov.za
