Media Release
Minister of Education Donald Grant
Western Cape

7 January, 2014

Celebrating success at schools and district offices

Statements by Minister Donald Grant, Minister of Education, Western Cape

This morning, thousands of NSC candidates will begin celebrating their individual National Senior Certificate (NSC) results.

There will also be many pleased principals and educators, as well as district staff, who have succeeded in improving their schools’ performance and their quality of passes this year.

I am extremely pleased that all of our 8 education districts in the Western Cape improved their results compared to those of 2012 and that they all achieved pass rates above 80%.

I should like to congratulate in particular the Metro South District for producing the biggest improvement in the percentage pass rate from 78% in 2012 to 83% in 2013. Their bachelor passes also increased from 31% to 38.9%. As this is a large district, the 5% improvement means an additional 637 passes from 2 164 to 2 801.

The Overberg District achieved the highest percentage pass rate in the province, falling just short of 90%, with 89.8%. They were followed closely by the West Coast with 88.4%.

Another significant improvement in the districts is Metro East, which achieved 80.3% - up from 76.8% the previous year.

Khanyolwethu Sec in Lwandle achieved a pass rate of 82.6%, up from 57.3% in 2012. Their number of passes also increased dramatically from 63 to 128.

We are delighted to see that the majority of high schools in the Khayelitsha area have again improved on their results.

The WCED invests most of its resources in poorer communities such as Khayelitsha and we are encouraged by their improvement in performance and quality since 2009.

A closer look at their results reveals the following:

Improvements in the numbers passing in Khayelitsha schools

Since 2009, the numbers passing has increased by nearly 1 000 from 1 538 candidates to 2 521.

The pass rate in the 21 schools in this area has improved from 53.6% in 2009 to 74.2% in 2013.

This is an increase of over 20% in just 5 years!

In the last year the pass rate improved by 4% from 70.2% in 2012.

Improvements in the quality of passes in Khayelitsha schools

The number of bachelor passes in Khayelitsha has increased from 305 in 2009 to 821 in 2013.

The percentage average of bachelor passes has increased steadily from 2009 from 12.3% in 2009 to 25.1% in 2013.

Decreasing the number of underperforming schools in Khayelitsha schools

The number of underperforming schools has decreased from 15 in 2009 to 4 in 2013. This is a decrease of 73.4%.

One school in Khayelitsha that has done particularly well in 2013 is Intlanganiso Secondary. The school achieved a 94.1% pass rate, up from 69.6% the previous year. The school achieved 33 more passes in 2013 than in 2012 and also increased its bachelor passes from 14.1% to 27.4%.

Manyano HS should also be proud of their 2013 results - particularly for their improvements in the last two years. In 2011, Manyano achieved a pass rate of 42.3%. In 2012 they achieved 63.5% and in 2013 increased this further to 80.9%. The school improved the number of passes by 61 from 66 in 2012 to 127 in 2013.

A special mention must be made of COSAT, who has achieved a 100% pass rate this past year.

Congratulations to all the schools that have made improvements.

I should like to also recognize the results of the three high schools in Manenberg.

As many of you are aware, these three schools - Manenberg High, Silverstream High and Phoenix High School – were all affected by prolonged gang violence which impinged on, and disrupted, teaching and learning time.

The WCED arranged for learners from these schools to receive additional tuition, implementing a number of additional support measures for learners. The WCED gave learners additional exemplar papers, deployed subject advisors to assist in addressing any backlogs in various subject areas, arranged for additional tuition after school hours and delivered telematics DVDs and materials to support teaching and learning.

The results in these schools are as follows:

  Pass rate 2012 Pass rate 2013 Bachelor pass 2012 Bachelor pass 2013
Manenberg Sec 64.6% 63.9% 7.3% 13.9%
Silverstream High 34.2% 69.1% 6.6% 8.8%
Phoenix High 60.7% 68.9% 14.3% 18.9%

While we saw a very slight decrease in Manenberg Secondary’s results, the other two schools had significant increases, particularly Silverstream HS which improved their results by 100%!

This morning I visited Silverstream Sec to personally congratulate their Principal, Mr. Peters, on this wonderful turnaround. In 2012, Silverstream Sec achieved the lowest percentage pass rate in the province. Their turnaround to 69.1% is something to be celebrated.

I am also pleased to see increases in the bachelor passes at each of the three Manenberg schools.

I admire the determination of the learners and educators at these schools to improve on their results even under very difficult circumstances. They are to be congratulated and we look forward to seeing even further improvements next year.

As mentioned yesterday, overall, we are pleased with the 2013 results. They have confirmed that the system is qualitatively getting better and I believe that further improvements can and will be achieved in the years to come because our focus has always been on systematic, sustainable improvements – not band-aid solutions.

I acknowledge that there is still much to be done to improve education in this province and we will continue to look at how we can best support our schools and learners and achieve sustainable systemic change.


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