"We are confident that the Class of 2012 in the Western Cape will do themselves and this province proud," he said.

He said over 44,000 young people from the province would receive their individual National Senior Certificate (NSC) results on Thursday.

"As these results are released it was important to analyse and interpret them to obtain an accurate sense of the state of education in this province."

Grant said there was a tendency to only focus on the provincial pass rate but factors like the number of candidates writing and passing the NSC examinations, the number of candidates achieving access to a Bachelor's Degree pass and the number of under performing schools were also important.

"If we examine indicators such as this we can then determine if the system is ultimately improving and if the Western Cape government is fulfilling our objectives of improving the quality of education and access to education as outlined in our strategic plan"

He said education in the Western Cape have improved since 2009.

"We hope to see further improvements in the 2012 results, especially in the number of passes achieved."