Our collective effort has produced beautiful matric results
Against all odds, the Eastern Cape’s grade 12 learners in 2023 improved our matric pass rate to an unheard of and amazing 81.4% from 77.3% in 2022.
This improvement is the outcome of a concerted effort by parents, teachers, learners, the ANC-led government, communities, guardians and a number of private organisations that joined forces to improve the performance of our matriculants.
Over the years our province lingered at the bottom of the table with the least effective provincial education department; the poor matric results attracted ridicule.
As we committed ourselves to improve both the quality and quantity of our grade 12s, like-minded individuals and companies threw their weight behind our efforts as the ANC-led government. Inspired by the Freedom Charter’s commitment to ensuring that education shall be free, compulsory, universal and equal for all children, the ANC’s
2009 election manifesto committed to ensure the realisation of universal schooling, improving quality education and eliminating disparities.
As we made education one of our priorities, we were mindful of the challenges facing learners, schools and communities, so we committed to a major renewal of our schooling and education system. In 2009 the province recorded a 51% pass rate for grade 12. This is why we are over the moon with the class of 2023.
I am excited that the largely rural districts of Alfred Nzo East and West, and Chris Hani East top the performance charts with more learners obtaining top grades. It is amazing that the grade 12 learners that wrote the matric exams in 2023 were still at preschool when the ANC committed to improve schooling in 2009.
Over the years a number of ANC-led government administrations in the province invested about R225.6bn in school infrastructure, grant funding to schools, teaching, learning, school nutrition and learner and teacher support material to ensure the realisation of our manifesto commitments.
When I tabled the maiden state of the province address in 2019, I said: “In our education targets for this term, we prefer quality outcomes [rather] than quantity, hence our focus will be on improving outcomes in maths, science, accounting, technology and tourism.” Furthermore, I said going back to below the 70% mark for our grade 12
results was not an option. The results of the class of 2023 show that the work we continue doing is yielding good results in our province.
In celebrating these much improved results, I want to pay tribute to the contributions of former deployees of the ANC, parents, communities, teachers, social partners, the South African Democratic Teachers Union, the national and provincial departments of basic education, particularly the late former MEC Mandla
Makupula, current MEC Fundile Gade and his team in prioritising the education of our children. While we still have a lot of work to do in implementing this commitment, we must use these improved results to celebrate the results of our collective work and to plan how best to address challenges facing the education system.
One of our priority areas is to work with families, learners, teachers, law enforcement agencies and communities to attend to the causes of learners dropping out of school at all levels. We must keep our children at school and empower them to obtain higher education qualifications so that they can start their own businesses, get the jobs of their dreams and contribute to building our province into a better place.
The broader provincial collective working in the education sector has a duty to up the ante in fighting drug abuse in our schools because this criminality affects schooling and takes some of our children out of the education system, robbing them of their brighter future. For us to win the war, we must design comprehensive support systems to ensure that no drugs are sold or used in our schools.
As we continue improving our education system, we will always be guided by Nelson Mandela’s wise words: “It is not beyond our power to create a world in which all children have access to a good education. Those who do not believe this have small imaginations.”
The stability in the relationship between the provincial department of education, teachers and their unions contributed to this remarkable historic outcome. These are some of the things we have to sustain for the benefit of our children and for the realisation of the commitments we have made to the people of our country. An improvement in education serves as catalyst to the socioeconomic trajectory of our province.