Page 30 - Provincial Treasury Estimates.pdf

Overview of the Provincial Revenue and Expenditure (OPRE) Financial Year 2023/24
The development of the child remains a priority for provincial government and to ensure that this remains priority the
ECD function was successfully shifted from the EC Department of Social Development (DSD) to the EC Department
of Education (DoE) as of 1 April 2022.

Table 1.9: Access to ECD across provinces, 2021

Source: 2021 General Household Survey, Statistics South Africa

Educational improvements have not only been in the basic foundation years of learning for young children alone, the
Province is now the second highest Province after Limpopo with 92.4 per cent of children aged 5 years and up who
now have access to an educational institution. The Province is also achieving great strides in improving the access to

education for young people ages 7 to 24 years with 76.9 % of young people attaining some level of education.

The steady improvement in the provincial Matric pass rate is telling of the efforts that the provincial government has
put in place to enhance the education sector and to ensure that final year Grade 12 students are fully ready and
equipped to be active contributors in the labour market. Even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted
normal learning and teaching, the provincial matric pass rate has improved in the sixth term of government steadily
increasing from 76.5% in 2019 to 77.3% in 2022. Nationally, a total of 922 034 matrics registered for the National

Senior Certificate Examinations (NSC), of these 725 146 were full time candidates and 196 888 were part-time
candidates. SA recorded a significant improvement to 80.1% matric pass rate compared to 76.4% obtained in 2021.

Figure 1.3 Eastern Cape Matric pass rates, 2016 -2022

90,0
80,0 76,8 73,0 77,4
70,5 68,1
70,0 64,9
59,3
60,0
50,0
.
40,0
30,0
20,0
10,0
0,0
2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
Source: Department of Basic Education, 2023

The quality of matric pass rates has also increased as can be seen by the increase of provincial bachelor passes from
30% in 2020 to 43 % in 2022, with over 58% of females receiving bachelor passes. In the 2022 academic year, not a

single district in the EC obtained an average matric pass rate of less than 71%.

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