Province, race linked to matric success

A NEW report of the Department of Basic Education (DBE) has laid bare just how a learners’s chances of attaining matric depend on the province in which they live, and also their race.

If you stay in Gauteng, you have a better chance of obtaining the critical certificate than someone in any of the country’s other provinces. Your chances are even better than someone in the Eastern Cape and Limpopo.

Also, being African means you have diminished chances of having a matric certificate compared with a white counterpart. This reality can be gauged in the data detailed in the latest General Household Survey (GHS).

Published by the Department of Basic Education, the GHS is based on data collated by Stats South Africa. The data pertaining to matric focused on the percentages of youth aged between 22 and 25 years old who had attained the certificate. It looked into the rates of matric attainment up to 2019.

The rates varied between the provinces, with Gauteng the only one with more than 60% of 22 to 25-year-olds with matric. It was followed by the Western Cape, where 60% of youth in this cohort had the national school certificate by 2019.

Limpopo and the Eastern Cape had the lowest percentage of 22 to 25-yearolds with matric.

“Gauteng (66%) consistently has the highest proportion of 22 to 25-year-olds having attained Grade 12, with the Eastern Cape (38%) and Limpopo (45%) consistently being the provinces with the lowest proportion of 22 to 25-year-olds who have attained Grade 12,” said the GHS.

The picture was not too impressive in the other provinces. Just 47% of Free State province’s 22 to 25-year-olds had matric. In the Northern Cape, 52% had the certificate. The figure stood at 53% in Mpumalanga, 54% in KwaZulu-Natal and 55% in the North West.

Nationally, just 55% had matric. The data also included those who obtained school-leaving passes in matric.

The rates of 22 to 25-year-olds possessing matric have improved compared with 2010. In that year, just 45.6% of the youth in this category had matric.

The matric picture looked even gloomier from a race perspective.

Just 51.7% of the African cohort possessed a matric certificate, 56.6% of coloureds and 90% across both Indian and white cohorts.

“The percentage of individuals who completed Grade 12 has also steadily been increasing since 2002,” said the GHS.

“There remains, however, a substantial racial gap, as significantly more white and Indian or Asian individuals in this age group (22 to 25-year-olds) have completed Grade 12 compared with black or African and coloured individuals.

“This pattern has remained consistent across the years.”

@BonganiNkosi87