Western Cape 2022 National Senior Certificate Awards

Speech by Minister David Maynier, Minister of Education Western Cape

Good morning, Premier Alan Winde, and Tracy Winde, and thank you for hosting us again this year at your lovely home.

Welcome to our principals, and our teachers, and our parents, and our colleagues, and our supporters.

And a special welcome to our top achievers of the Western Cape matric Class of 2022.

This is my first National Senior Certificate Awards ceremony as Minister of Education, and I’m delighted to be able to share this celebration with you.

I’d like to take a moment to recognise the work of our Exams team, led by Bertram Loriston, who exemplifies grace under pressure when faced with the most challenging of situations. 

Thank you for ensuring that the largest group of candidates ever could successfully write their matric exams, even in the face of load-shedding and a massive taxi strike in Cape Town.

2022 NSC results

But, this event is not about the Department, or the Minister, or the Premier.

It is about the incredible achievements of our learners and our schools. 

The Class of 2022 as a whole has had a tough time over the past few years.

They missed so much class time during the Covid-19 pandemic.

And in their matric year had to cope with load-shedding and transport disruption.

But, at the same time, our candidates, teachers and districts put an incredible amount of effort into preparing for the matric exams.

So, despite the challenges, our pass rate increased to 81.4%, while at the same time achieving a retention rate of nearly 70%, resulting in 49 102 candidates passing their matric exams.

Every single one of our successful candidates received a matric pass that makes them eligible to apply to universities or colleges.

Which means that we have extended opportunity to nearly 50 000 young people in the Western Cape.

When it comes to district performance:

Metro North topped the district log with 85.46% – congratulations to Director Wendy Horn and your team!

Metro Central, Metro East, Cape Winelands and Overberg districts all increased their pass rates this year.

In fact, every one of our districts scored above 77% in the matric exams, so we congratulate all of our district office teams!

On school performance per quintile:

Our quintile 1 schools raised their pass rate by 2 percentage points to 70.8%, beating quintile 2 schools.

And our quintile 3 schools also increased their pass rate by 0.3 percentage points, to 76.1%.

These schools are rapidly closing the gap with higher quintiles.

We are also delighted that the number of underperforming schools –that have achieved below 60% in the exams – has declined this year, from 38 in 2021, to 30 in 2022.

And of course, there was even more good news when the national minister announced the top candidates in the country:

Five Western Cape candidates ranked amongst the best and the brightest in South Africa.

• Kelly Prowse from Rustenberg Girls’ High School was recognised as the top candidate in Quintile 5, the top candidate in Mathematics, and the joint top candidate in the entire country!

• Simone Louw from Bloemhof High School ranked second in Quintile 5, while Kenneth Janson from Hoer Jongenskool Paarl was third in the same category.

• Athenkosi Khonzani from the Centre of Science and Technology was awarded second place in the Quintile 3 category.

• And Jason de Villiers from Rondebosch Boys’ High was the second placed candidate in Mathematics.

Congratulations to each of you on your outstanding achievements!

It’s worth noting that the top overall candidate in the country has come from the Western Cape in five of the past six years.

And the top candidate in Mathematics has come from our province for the past four years in a row.

Against all odds

The Class of 2022 has demonstrated incredible grit, and gave their all, putting in hundreds of extra hours of work, and investing in their own futures.

We must also recognise the outstanding efforts of our teachers, who have been doing the hard work of getting our learners back on track after the pandemic.

To our officials, who supported our schools and helped facilitate Winter school and Spring school and extra tutoring and online support – thank you for the work that you do every day, which often goes unrecognized.

And to the other important team members – our parents. We know that a school will succeed when you have actively involved parents. And when parents stand ready to support their child’s learning, that child excels.

So congratulations to the Class of 2022 for overcoming the odds, because that is exactly what you did, with the support of your teachers and parents.

WCED is overcoming the odds

Just as the Class of 2022 has overcome the odds, so too has the Western Cape Education Department.

We have taken so many big and bold steps under the leadership of Brent Walters over the past year, including:

• Taking decisive steps to reverse the learning losses in the Foundation Phase;

• Aiming to deliver up to 26 000 new places in our schools through our rapid school build programme, including building a junior high school in just 65 days;

• Employing up to 1 143 additional teachers;

• Offering permanent posts to up to 500 qualified Grade R teachers; and

• Increasing our budget by a massive R6.2 billion over the medium term.

But while today is one of celebration, we know that we have two major challenges that we must overcome this year:

Firstly, we are going to need to strengthen our interventions to deal with the devastating learning losses caused by the pandemic.

We are already making progress, but we cannot stop now, and we cannot wait for the someone else to lead the recovery.

Secondly, we need to expand access to schools by ramping up our rapid school build programme.

We cannot say that a child is receiving quality education if:

• There are too many learners in a class,

• There are too few teachers in a school, and

• There are too few schools in our province.

We must, and we will, overcome these tough challenges, so that we can bring hope by delivering on our vision of quality education

• For every learner,

• In every classroom,

• In every school

• in the Western Cape.

Thank you.

 

Media Enquiries:
Kerry Mauchline
Spokesperson to Minister David Maynier
Western Cape Ministry of Education
Kerry.Mauchline@westerncape.gov.za