DA says the ‘real’ matric pass rate is 44.1%, not 76.2%

The DA has accused basic education minister Angie Motshekga of inflating the 2020 matric results, saying the “real” pass rate was 44.1% and not 76.2%.

According to DA shadow minister of basic education Baxolile Nodada, the party came up with this figure by comparing the number of pupils who enrolled in 2018 to the number who wrote and passed matric in 2020.

Nodada accused Motshekga of whitewashing the results to mask the severe systemic failures of her department, saying she cannot hope to get away with “subterfuge”.

“The serious concerns plaguing the basic education system will never be addressed if the department continues to try to bury the truth of their ineptitude,” said Nodada.

“This pass rate is disappointing and indicative of the chaotic nature of the 2020 academic year, coupled with the historic challenge of SA’s extraordinarily high dropout rate.”

Nodada said the Western Cape had the highest real pass rate at 55.8%, and that the national real pass rate had increased by 5.2 percentage points from 2019.

He also criticised the overburdened curriculum, lack of infrastructure and inadequate support for teachers, saying these were not problems that arose with the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Unless the minister and the department urgently engage with stakeholders to address these failures, the true matric pass rate will plummet - to the detriment of our children and all our futures. This generation deserves better than perpetual poverty.”

Speaking on Jacaranda FM, basic education spokesperson Elijah Mhlanga hit back at the DA’s claims, saying the party’s analysis was “narrow-minded” and “disappointing”. 

He said the Western Cape faces challenges similar to those elsewhere in the country.

“If the Western Cape was perfect, it would achieve 100% in every respect and lead the entire country in performance. It is disingenuous, misleading and unwise to politicise education in the manner the DA has sought to do,” he said.

This is not the first time the DA has accused the department of fabricating matric results.

Last year, the party said the 2019 pass rate was lower than the 81.3% announced. The party believed the real pass rate was 38.9%.

“It seems the department of basic education is deliberately misleading us on the number of underperforming schools. The matric results indicate six schools in SA are critically underperforming, but a deeper analysis done by the DA can reveal there are 12 underperforming schools,” it said at the time.