In 2011 the Western Cape was the province with the best overall pass rate in National Senior Certificate examinations. Since then the province has slid down the rankings. In the 2014 government matric it fell to fourth placed with a 82.2.% pass rate, behind Gauteng (84.7%), the North West (84.6%) and the Free State (82.6%). The Western Cape did have the highest bachelors degree pass rate (38.8%) ahead of Gauteng (37%), North West (32.6%) and the Free State (30.2%).
Nonetheless, the Western Cape's relative decline on the main ranking has raised questions over what is going on with education in the one opposition-controlled province?
As noted previously, given the great political weight given to the overall matric pass rate there is an ever-present temptation for schools and provincial governments to ‘game the system' in various ways. One means of doing so is to encourage weaker pupils to exit the system before taking the final matric examinations.
Equal Education, among other organisations, has highlighted the issue of the high drop-out rate, with half of all pupils in Grade 10 in 2012 failing to even sit the 2014 matric. In its comment on the matric results SADTU itself accused schools of "manipulating the learner promotion and progress because of pressure to produce better Senior Certificate results. This contributes to the dropout of learners more especially in grades 9, 10 and 11."
The Western Cape Minister of Education Debbie Schäfer states "that when considering the NSC results, one has to consider the numbers of learners passing through the system and ultimately passing their matric. We believe that retaining more learners in the system and giving them the opportunity to pass the NSC is more important than ‘losing' learners along the way so that schools can achieve a higher pass rate."
What then is the impact of the drop-out rate on the relative performance of the different provinces? The following four graphs seek to illustrate the effect of this on provincial performance since the introduction of the new government matric in 2008.