Durban - KwaZulu-Natal improved its matric pass rate in 2017.
And with 72.9% - an improvement of 6.5 percentage points, from the 2016 pass rate of 66.4% - the province has also been named the country’s most improved.
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga announced the pass rates on Thursday evening.
The national pass rate was also up - from 72.5%, in 2016, to 75.1% last year - and the country’s most rural provinces had all bettered their 2016 performances.
A total of 802 431 candidates - comprising 629 155 full-time and 173 276 part-time candidates - registered for the 2017 matric exams.
Of these, 534 484 full-time and 117 223 part-time candidates actually wrote them.
“We have noted the upward trend in the performance of our three most rural provinces, namely, the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo,” Motshekga said on Thursday.
And, she continued, these improvements were an indication that her department’s interventions were beginning to bear fruit.
The minister said her department conceded that despite the notable stability of - and improvements in - the system, they were “yet to cross our own Rubicon”.
“We must agree that much has been achieved, but much more needs to be done in the areas of efficiency and quality,” she said.