The South African Class of 2022 has managed a remarkable 80.1 percent pass rate of “high-quality passes and distinctions” in final high school exams, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga announced in Johannesburg.This success happened despite challenges from Covid-19, load shedding and sporadic service delivery protests, she said.

The National Senior Certificate (NSC) pass rate is slightly higher than the 76.4% recorded in 2021, an increase of 3.7% compared to the previous year, Motshekga said.

She noted that this cohort, with over 900,000 students, was exposed to the pandemic for two consecutive years when they were in Grades 10 and 11 in 2020 and 2021, respectively. 

“The Class of 2022 is the first cohort to write the NSC exams during post-Covid-19 pandemic. This class was also subjected to the challenges of enervating load shedding and sporadic service delivery protests,” the minister added.

Motshekga said of the 922,034 candidates who registered for the 2022 final exams (with 725,146 full-time candidates) across the country, some 278,814 students achieved Bachelor passes, an improvement of 8.9% from 2021.

In addition, some 193,357 learners qualified to study towards a Diploma, some 108,159 achieved higher certificate passes and 117 achieved plain NSC passes, she said.

 Among the regions, the Free State clinched the highest number of learners who passed their NSC exams for four years in a row now — scoring a pass rate of 88.5%, an increase of 2.8% from 2021, she added.

 The province is followed by Gauteng, which achieved 84.4%, an increase of 1.6% from 2021, while KwaZulu-Natal, the most improved province, attained 83.0%, an increase of 6.2% from 2021, according to the minister.