Outlier Education
Most-popular school subjects, ranked
What subjects are South Africa’s high school learners opting to take to grade 12? English, maths literacy and life sciences are the three most popular choices in terms of the number of learners who wrote the final grade 12 exams.
Of the 11 ‘core’ subjects offered (see chart) in SA’s school’s, maths is ranked fifth and physical science eighth.
In 2024, close to 584,000 learners wrote English, 443,000 wrote maths literacy and 375,000 wrote life sciences.
In comparison, 251,488 wrote maths and 200,715 wrote physical science.
Maths and physical science are what the department of basic education calls ‘gateway subjects that are essential for South Africa’s socioeconomic development’, yet only about one-third (36%) of the grade 12 learners wrote the maths exams and 28% wrote the physical science exams.
In both subjects, about one in five passed with 60% or more, the marks required to get into a science degree at university.
🔗 Read more: Matric 2024 Results: Our Highlights
Matric 2024 results: Our highlights
By Laura Grant
A lot has been written about the 2024 matric exam results so rather than rehashing the same information I looked through the results to see what ‘sparks of joy’ I could find other than the overall pass rate of 87.2%
Bachelor passes
Take the number of bachelor passes, for instance. More than 330,000 learners passed their exams well enough to apply to study at a university. What that means is nearly half of 2024’s grade 12s (47.8%) got the highest-level pass, aka, a bachelor pass.
Girls are steaming ahead of boys with 49.2% of them earning bachelor passes.
Girls have outnumbered boys in grade 12 classrooms for at least the past four years. Since 2021 about 56% of learners were girls, so it’s little wonder that more girls earned bachelor passes in 2024 than boys – 51,000 more, if you want put a number on it.
Education experts have expressed concern about the disparity in numbers between boys and girls in grade 12 because it’s a sign that boys may be struggling in the education system.
More girls than boys
To quote our new minister of basic education, Siviwe Gwarube, “The National Senior Certificate is not just a certificate – it is a gateway to opportunities that empower our young people to pursue further education, enter the workforce and contribute to the socio-economic development of South Africa.“
A recent StatsSA earnings report shows that a tertiary education can have a big influence on the money a person earns.
There are, no doubt, still many anxious young women and men waiting to hear if they have a place at a university this year.
My second spark of joy is from the increase in the number of learners who passed maths with 60% or more in 2024. This is a requirement for anyone wanting to do a science, engineering or technology degree.
The government set a target of 35,000 people getting 60% for maths a year by 2024. The 2023 matrics were the first group to exceed that target and the class of 2024 has done even better.
The same target was set for physical science, but things took a turn for the worse there in 2024.
Spark of joy three came from digging around in the school subject report the Department of Basic Education publishes. This lists every school, how many learners wrote the matric exams, how many wrote maths and how many passed maths, among other things.
I was interested to see which are the schools where learners wrote the maths exams and, of course, whether they passed. So I worked out what percentage of the total learners at each school wrote maths and passed (with 30% or more because that’s the only information in the report).
The report also lists the quintile of each school. There are five quintiles and they basically represent socioeconomic categories, so schools in quintiles 1 to 3 are usually in lower-income areas and parents don’t have to pay schools fees. Schools in quintiles 4 and 5 tend to be in more affluent areas and parents pay school fees. The schools in the 99 category are generally independent schools where learners wrote the national senior certificate exams.
The quintile 5 schools in the Western Cape stood out. But I suppose that’s what I expected.
What I was really happy to see was how many schools in quintiles 1 to 3 were listed as having children writing and passing the maths exams. A few had 100% of their matrics writing maths and passing. KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga stood out in this regard.
From grade 1 to matric: Tracking the shrinking class of 2024
By Laura Grant
👀 Visit the interactive version of this tracker
Most of 2024’s grade 12 class started their school journey in 2013. In that year, 1.2-million children were enrolled in grade 1. 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 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, close to 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.
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