Most of 2024’s Grade 12 (matric) class started their school journey back in 2013.
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According to The Outlier website, in that year, 1.2 million children were enrolled in Grade 1 in South Africa.
By 2024, the Grade 12 class had 740 876 learners – 60% of the size of the class 12 years previously.
In general, the number of children moving to the next grade gradually decreases.
After Grade 10, there is usually a significant drop.
The class of 2024, for example, shrunk by a whopping 407 561 learners between Grade 10 and matric.
The difference between the number of learners in Grade 10 and grade 12 is used to calculate the ‘throughput rate’, which was 64.5% in 2024.
In other words, fewer than two out of three Grade 10s made it to matric.
This is lower than last year’s 68%.
The throughput rate has been decreasing since 2021.
Failure and repetition rates
Mathanzima Mweli, the director-general of the department of basic education, said this year’s 64% throughput rate was ‘healthy’ when compared with other middle-income countries.
These, he said, ‘are expected to be around 60% or so’.
The 407 561 who didn’t make it from Grade 10 to Grade 12 did not necessarily drop out of the education system.
‘Our main problem is the high failure and repetition rate,’ Mweli said when he presented the technical report for the 2024 exams.
The table shows the number of pupils enrolled in each grade from 2007 to 2024, according to department of basic education data.
Do you write matric in 2024? How did you do?
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