Commissioner to visit Westville Prison following stellar performance

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The National Commissioner of Correctional Services, Makgothi Samuel Thobakgale, is set to visit uSethubeni School, located at the Durban Westville Correctional Centre, on Tuesday, 21 January 2025 12:00. This visit comes after the school’s remarkable achievement among its students.

uSETHUBENI CORRECTIONAL SCHOOL ACHIEVES 100% PASS RATE

uSethubeni Correctional School has achieved a 100% pass rate and a full house of bachelor’s passes for all the student inmates. The school has managed to maintain a consistent pass rate of 100% for more than seven years since 2016.

The school’s top achiever, Singh Christopher, secured four distinctions in the 2024 NSC examinations.

KZN PREMIER THAMI NTULI PRAISES INMATES FOR OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE

KwaZulu-Natal Premier Thami Ntuli, praised inmates for achieving a 100% pass rate. According to ECR, Ntuli was at the Durban ICC when he spoke about the achievement of the inmates.

“They make the opportunity to turn their lives around and turn their backs on a life of crime,” he said.

There were four correctional schools that sat for the 2024 NSC exams in KZN, namely:

Kuseni Secondary School: five candidates
Qalakabusha Secondary School: six candidates
uSethubeni Youth: 25 candidates
Sicebangolwazi Secondary School: 17 candidates

KwaZulu-Natal’s class of 2024 not only did well regarding the pass rate of inmates, but the province also came out number two nationally with an 89.5% pass rate, achieving the highest number of bachelor’s passes in the country.

Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube announced the official matric results on 13 January 2025.

“In 2024, I am pleased to announce that KwaZulu-Natal achieved the highest number of Bachelor passes with 84 470, followed by Gauteng with 66 979 and the Eastern Cape with 45 662,” she said.

PRISON INMATES PASS RATE OVER THE YEARS

These are the pass rates for DCS over the years:

2015- 73%
2016- 72%
2017- 77%
2018- 77%
2019- 82.6%
2020- 86.3%
2021- Full-time matric pupils 89.83% and 77% for both full-time and part-time.
2022- 87.5%
2023- 93.2%
2024- 96.2%

Minister of Correctional Services, Pieter Groenewald, officially announced the results on 17 January 2025.

“This year, 171 learners have written the National Senior Certificate examinations across 17 Correctional schools. I want to say that they have passed the examination and that we have 13 of these 17 schools with 100% pass rate. There are 104 of the learners who can further study at universities obtaining Bachelor,” said the minister.

Groenewald added that there was a significant increase from last year’s pass rate.

He said, “There’s an increase of 3% on the passing rate from last year and this is a record passing rate of 96.2% for Correctional Services.”