Pretoria - Hundreds of thousands of youths countrywide have been up all night anxiously trying to get their hands on a copy of their local newspaper to find out how they faired in their final examinations.
While many will be jubilant at the thought of closing the book on 12 years of schooling, others will have to face writing supplementary exams for those subjects they did not pass or repeat the year.
The results have been published in major newspapers and on the Department of Education's website. Pupils can also visit their respective schools for the last time to receive their results.
Over the last few days, the districts have been distributing pupils' Statements of Results to schools, a process monitored by the Department of Education. The schedules handed over to principals are the complete set of results for each learner.
Learners are urged to go to their school to receive their results officially from 8am.
About 642 691 learners sat for the national matric exams at the end of last year, with few major hiccups.
The class of 2010 faced a number of challenges, largely being the extended holiday for the FIFA World Cup and the public service strike which brought teaching to a halt in many schools across the country.
The Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, was due to address the nation this morning to announce the national matric pass rate. She is expected to announce better than expected results.
Yesterday, the minister was confident the results would reflect stability in the education system.
She said the results showed there were successes in problematic areas the department had addressed throughout the year. At the same time, the results also highlighted those areas that the department had identified as weak points.
Throughout the day, provincial education departments will hold briefings to expand on their own pass rates.
Some 60.6 percent of matrics passed the 2009 exams, indicating a decrease of about 2 percent down from 2008. In 2008, 62.5 percent of matrics passed.
Mpumalanga registered the poorest performance with a pass rate of 47.9 percent, a decline of 3.9 percent.
