IEB matriculants achieve 98.3 percent pass rate

The results, announced shortly after midnight on Tuesday, showed that of those 10,212 candidates who wrote the examination, 85.26 percent achieved a result that allows them to apply to study at university, while 11.66 percent of the candidates achieved a pass that allows them to apply to study a diploma course.

A further 1.37 percent achieved entry for study at the Higher Certificate level.

All in all there were 10,212 full-time and 563 part-time candidates from 200 schools across Southern Africa who wrote the IEB’s National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations in October and November.

IEB chief executive Anne Oberholzer said: “The IEB is proud of the achievements of the Class of 2015. Learners have again shown that with a commitment to hard work over their 12 years of schooling and supported by a dedicated cohort of teachers and parents, they have achieved the first major milestone in their learning careers.”

In 2014 the pass rate was 98.38, achieved by 9,976 pupils who wrote the exams. The increased number of candidates writing the exams was primarily brought about by an increase in pupils at the existing schools as well as eight new schools opting to have their matriculants write the IEB examination.

Apart from matriculants in South Africa, there were 420 candidates from Namibia, Mozambique and Swaziland who wrote and passed the exams.

Some 65 percent of those full-time candidates who wrote IEB’s NSC took mathematics as a subject while 48 percent took science as a subject.

There were also 51 candidates from the German schools in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town who passed the combined Abitur-NSC pass that allows them to study at either a German university or a South African university.

There were also 2,498 candidates who took advanced mathematics as a course — an increase of 18.5 percent over the previous year.

ANA

(File photo)