The pupils who wrote the 2006 senior certificate (‘matric') examinations were the first to have begun their school careers (in 1995) under an African National Congress government. Of the 528 525 candidates in government schools 351 503 (66.5%) passed; 85 830 (16.2%) passed with exemption (a university pass); and, 25 217 (4.8%) passed mathematics at higher grade. It is worth asking what kind of progress this represents since the ANC took over?  This article will look at changes in the overall matric results between 1995 and 2006, while the next will examine the racial and provincial breakdown of last year's results.

There are two basic difficulties in assessing changes in the matric results. The first is that between 1994 and 1996 the various education departments, and the various exams they set, had to be combined into nine provincial systems. One examiner told the Sunday Times in December 1995 that getting all the pupils from the different race-based education departments to write the same exams, the following year, was going to be a nightmare.  "You've got people with wildly different educational attainments, people coming out of systems designed to be different, who are suddenly going to be asked to perform at the same level. You've got a simple choice. Either you set an exam where a reasonable percentage of ex-DET pupils will pass - and risk having the more privileged check in with 98 and 99 percent pass rates - or you set one that has just about everybody from the DET system failing. It's hard to see the middle path." Whatever the difficulties in striking the right balance in 1996 279 487 (53.9%) out of 518 225 candidates passed the government matric, with 80 015 of these pupils (15.4%) passing with exemption.

Integrating these different systems was always going to be hard in itself, but in 1996 the ANC government set about packaging off many of state's most experienced bureaucrats. It also decided to pension off many of the most qualified teachers in government schooling. By September 1997 15 541 had taken packages. Over the following few years there was a drop in the pass rate and a precipitous decline in the numbers of pupils passing with exemption. In 1997 the pass rate had declined to 47.3% with the number of exemptions dropping to 70 127. In 1999 only 63 725 (12.5%) pupils passed the government matric with exemption. This was the lowest matric exemption rate ever and the lowest in absolute numbers since 1990. The number of pupils passing high grade mathematics slid from about 25 000 in 1995 to 19 327 in 2000.

The second problem in assessing the significance of changes in the matric pass rate is that the ANC has not been averse to fiddling with the results. In 1998 the South African Certification Council decided that those pupils whose first language was a black African one would have their final results automatically upped by 5% (for instance, if they received 50% for a subject it would become 52.5%). This racially-based measure - which is still in effect - did not address the underlying problem; the poor quality of second-language English language instruction in government schools. A recent report [pdf] noted that it was "singularly inappropriate for preparing students for the study of other subjects."

In June 1999 Kader Asmal took over as Minister of Education and the following four years saw a dramatic increase in the pass rate from 48.9% in 1999 to 73.2% in 2003 (the final matric exam before the 2004 elections.) The number of pupils passing with exemption was also bumped up to 82 010 (18.6%) by 2003. It is now generally accepted that the increase in the pass rate was due not to a sudden, and miraculous, improvement in the quality of government schooling, but rather manipulation by the education department. There is evidence to suggest that the marking process was fiddled with as was the statistical moderation of the results.

Another change was that pupils now received up to a quarter of their marks before writing the final exam. As Professor Jonathan Jansen of the University of Pretoria noted, although such continuous assessment was desirable in theory, the government did not have "a reliable and valid protocol in place to ensure that such marks are standardised across the national education system. To put it bluntly, many schools will extract maximum gain from the opportunity to rate their own pupils." (Sunday Times 4^th January 2004)

Perhaps the largest part of the increase in the overall pass rate in 2002 and 2003 was accounted for by the increase in the number of pupils writing the matric exams at Standard Grade level. In 2004 Umalusi - the body responsible for setting and monitoring standards -- reported that, "since the Standard Grade syllabus and examination has always been easier, and was indeed designed to be so" a resultant increase in the pass rate was to be expected. In addition, the papers for second language English, Biology, and Mathematics, were found to have become a lot easier.  

In 2004 Naledi Pandor took over from Asmal as Minister of Education. In that year control over the moderating process was transferred from her department to Umalusi which proceeded to tighten up examination standards. As a result of this, the pass rate has slightly dropped over the past two years.   

So, what can be said about the 2006 results? It is difficult to rest too much meaning on the increase in the pass rate between 1999 and 2003 for reasons outlined above. The exemption rate is still lower than it was in the 1980s, but there has been an increase in absolute numbers, albeit a relatively modest one. The number of pupils passing higher grade mathematics is, however, as Thabo Mbeki recently acknowledged, little better than it was in 1995. The ANC government has, it seems, made little progress in expanding that kind of quality education that would allow pupils to progress on to university and study maths-based subjects such as accounting and engineering.

However, if one takes into account the increasing number of pupils in independent schools the picture does brighten somewhat. The number of pupils writing the Independent Examination Board exam has increased from 1305 (0.3% of the total) in 1994 to 7035 in 2006. The pass rate of the IEB exam last year was 98.3% and the matric exemption rate was 78.8%. Pupils writing the IEB exam make up 1.3% of all those writing matric, 1.9% of those who pass, 6.1% of those passing with exemption, 10.3% of those passing Higher Grade mathematics, and 14% of those passing HG maths with an A. If one includes the IEB results then last year 91 374 pupils passed matric with exemption, and 28 157 passed higher grade mathematics.