Johannesburg - Gauteng MEC for Education Panyaza Lesufi has revealed that Covid-19 was responsible for the deaths of 34 of the province’s teachers.
Lesufi disclosed this on Wednesday, when he revealed Gauteng’s matric results, top-performing schools as well as top-performing pupils.
Gauteng is the second best-performing province, with a 83.3% pass rate, and Lesufi dedicated the performance of the Class of 2020 to the deceased teachers for the sacrifices they made in helping pupils achieve those results.
“I want to dedicate these results to the 34 educators that sacrificed their lives so that our children could get an education and pass. We also lost 18 officials of the department,” he said.
Lesufi also commended the 110 184 matriculants for achieving the 83.8% pass rate, a 3.5% reduction from the province’s performance in 2019.
He also said Gauteng was proud of the efforts of the Class of 2020, especially during the challenging times of Covid-19.
“We congratulate the pupils for their resilience, dedication and hard work displayed during this pandemic, and wish them well in their future endeavours. We recommit that the top three achievers from all township schools will be awarded a four-year bursary to a higher education institution of their choice,” he said.
“I am proud that our educators, our officials and indeed, the entire leadership gave us the support needed.”
According to Lesufi, the Class of 2020 showed resilience and delivered despite being faced with the severe disruptions to teaching and learning brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We might accept that our results declined by 3.5%; but the reality is: in the history of our province and in the history of our country, no single province has helped 92 000 pupils pass matric, and more than 45 000 achieve Bachelors passes to go to a university of their choice,” he said.
Gauteng, he said, had once again achieved the significant milestones in respect of national performance. He said some of those milestones included the quality of passes, progressed learners, spatial distribution, gender, achievement in mathematics and science, achievement in language, and the number of university endorsements.
Lesufi also said he was especially pleased with the performance of township schools that achieved a 100% pass rate, and a Bachelors rate above 60%.
These are Diepsloot Secondary No 2, with 76.9% Bachelor passes; Rusoord Secondary School, with 73.9% Bachelor passes; Marlboro Gardens Secondary School, with 69.2% Bachelor passes and Denver Secondary School, which had 66.1% Bachelor passes.
“I want to congratulate the principals of the 82 township public schools that achieved above 90%. This is down from the 132 schools that achieved above 90% last year. It must also be noted that just over 91.7% of Gauteng schools perform above the nationally defined benchmark for school under-performance of 65%,” he said.
IOL