More black pupils failing matric

The statistics confirm what everyone knows, but they look grim in black and white: Barely half of South Africa's black schoolchildren passed matric last year, while nearly every white pupil who wrote the exam sailed through.

DOCUMENT: Matric race data by province

The damning figures were published by the minister of basic education, Angie Motshekga, in response to a question from the Democratic Alliance.

The Eastern Cape fared worst with only 45% of black candidates passing matric at any level.

Limpopo, with a black pass rate of 49.3% was the other province to fail more than half the cohort.

The figures, which were published without any comment from Motshekga, underline the handicap facing black children trying to break out of the cycle of poverty and the challenge facing the department of education.

With a budget of R140-billion for this year, education takes the biggest single slice of government spending, but has failed over the first 15 years of democracy to make any inroad into the inherited backlog in traditionally black townships and rural areas.

Educationist Mamphela Ramphele was the first to acknowledge that apartheid actually gave black pupils a better deal than they get now, but the refrain has been picked up by cabinet ministers.

The figures show that in the Eastern Cape, 52 998 black pupils wrote matric and 28 878 failed, while only 33 of 3 130 white pupils who wrote the exam failed.

In Limpopo, 40 190 of the 87 171 black candidates failed, while seven of the 1 386 white pupils didn't make the cut.

Gauteng managed to pass 70.4% of the 71 687 black candidates and all but 136 of the 15 291 white candidates, while the Western Cape graduated only 60% of the 11 767 black candidates.

Only 32 of the 8408 white pupils who wrote matric failed.

In total, 56.6% of the 460 828 black matric candidates passed.

Brendan Boyle