South Africa's matric pass rate should exclude former Model C schools to ensure a more honest reflection of the state of education. This is according to education activist Tshepo Motsepe of Equal Education, who disputes the 70.7% pass rate and says wealthier schools make it look better than it really is.''The pass rate should be 40%. The former white schools have carried the pass rate. The quintile 4 and 5 schools should be excluded and we should focus on the poorer schools because that's where the majority of the learners are," he said.story_article_left1Zero-fee and low-fee schools make up just over 75% of high schools where the National Senior Certificate exams were written - 4843 out of 6132.Motsepe saidthe Eastern Cape - which had eight of the 10 worst-performing districts - was an example of a collapsed education system. He said districts that had elevated pass rates in the Eastern Cape were boosted by former Model C schools. ''The literacy rate of these learners is three years behind other learners in the same grade. They are only being taught in English in Grade 4 and by then it's too late," he said.The national matric pass rate dropped to 70.7% from 75.8% in 2014.Of the 388 845 pupils who wrote maths literacy nationally, 105379 passed at the bare minimum of 30%. Many struggled to add large numbers and needed to be trained on how to use a calculator, a postmortem of the results found.Suellen Shay, dean of the Centre for Higher Education Development at the University of Cape Town, said the shortcomings in the results mirrored the results of the national benchmark tests written by matrics for entry to university.story_article_right2Shay said that only 30% of the 80 000 who wrote the tests in 2015 were found to be proficient in maths and English.''It's not about whether they can speak English, but rather can they use English for academic purposes."Progressed pupils - those who failed Grade 11 twice and were promoted to matric at the end of 2014 - were responsible for some of the drop in the pass rate.But experts cautioned against criticism of this practice because 22 000 of those pupils passed matric, a sign that the system was effective.This is according to Mary Metcalfe, visiting professor at the University of the Witwatersrand's School of Governance, who said: ''People shouldn't feel anxiety about the decline. We should feel anxiety about the large number of learners who don't make it to the National Senior Certificate."..