Matric 2023: Free State leads the pack!

THE Department of Basic Education has praised the Class of 2023 as the best brains ever.

Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga said the class has produced the best raw marks, and this led to them performing better than their previous peers.

Motshekga released these results on Thursday afternoon, 18 January, in Randburg, north of Joburg.

The Class of 2023 scored 82,9%, and this was the highest since the dawn of democracy.

Clinging on to the number one spot is the Free State with 89,03%, followed by KZN with 86,36 in the third spot, and finally, Gauteng with 85,38%, securing the third place.

The minister said the class of 2023, 88,2% of whom were between the ages of 16 and 20, has also produced phenomenal bachelor passes, which stand at 40,9% and more than 250 000 distinctions.

The maths pass rate went up to 63,5% compared to last year's 55%.

This is despite a number of challenges they encountered along the way, from Covid-19, floods, vandalised classrooms, load shedding, service delivery protests and lack of teachers in certain gateway subjects, among others.

Motshekga said it was heartening to see that there was a very small percentage of 1% gap pass rates attained by provinces between KZN and Gauteng as well as the North West, Western Cape and the Eastern Cape.

According to Motshekga, the number of candidates qualifying for admission to bachelor studies at universities is 282 894, which represents 40,9% of the total number of candidates who wrote the 2023 NSC exams.

"The bachelor passes in number and percentage are the highest attained in the entire history of the NSC exams. KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng contributed the most bachelor passes," she said.

The rest of the 27,2% of the candidates bagged 187 876 passes with a diploma, and 14,8% of candidates bagged 101 973 higher certificates.

On a negative note, 15 schools performed between 0% and 19%.