JOHANNESBURG: The Independent Examinations Board (IEB) has recorded a 98.07% matric pass rate for 2020, a slight drop compared to the previous year’s 98.82%.
The IEB exam results were released at midnight. Umalusi‚ the examination standardisation body‚ monitored the marking and results and declared the exams to be fair and valid‚ according to a statement put out by the IEB.
IEB CEO Anne Oberholzer said 88.42% (compared to 89.51% in 2019) of the cohort achieved entry to degree study, 8.14% (7.91% in 2019) qualified for entry to diploma study and 1.51% (1.4% in 2019) achieved entry for study at the higher certificate level.
Oberholzer said 12,024 full-time and 1,139 part-time candidates from 233 examination centres writing in 261 venues across Southern Africa wrote the IEB National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations. These included pupils from Namibia (183), Mozambique (33) and Eswatini (299).
This is an increase from 2019 when there were 11,818 full-time candidates and 779 part-time candidates.
She said while the extent was not immediately clear in the numbers, Covid-19 had had an effect on the school population and saw several learners withdraw from the year and postpone completion of grade 12 until 2021.
“It is interesting to note that the hard lockdown had differing effects across schools within the IEB. Some schools were able to make a smooth transition to online teaching and learning as they had the resources available and, in fact, had already been using them in the normal course of events,” Oberholzer said.
From a total of 639 pupils offering AP English, 97.65% achieved a pass mark of 40% or above; all learners offering AP Afrikaans achieved a mark of 40% and above.
Gauteng had more than 50% of the IEB learners (7,068), followed by KwaZulu-Natal (2,201), the Western Cape (1,358), the Eastern Cape (612) and Mpumalanga (385).