​Social Development Minister, Lindiwe Zulu has congratulated social grant beneficiaries who did well and passed their matric exams during the most difficult period marked by many disruptions.
She said the performance of the class of 2022 social grant beneficiaries showed an impressive increase between the years 2020/21 and 2021/22 in all provinces, with the overall increase now sitting at 8.7%, from 0.2 % in 2020/2021.

“The ranking of the social grant beneficiaries’ performance by provinces saw Gauteng as the best performing province at 81.59%, followed by the Free State (76.19%), KwaZulu-Natal (75.73%), North West (74.19%), and the Northern Cape (71.23%),” said Zulu.

She added that Limpopo was the only province with performance below the 60% threshold, at 59.65%.

Last year saw more female social grant beneficiary learners sitting for their National Senior Certificate exam – 256 902, as compared to 191 490 males – in a trend observed since previous years.

The overall male pass rate was reportedly higher at 72.5%, compared to the female passes at 70.39%. This was observed in all provinces except in Gauteng, where 81.86% of females performed slightly better than their male counterparts, who obtained 81.21%.

According to Zulu, these results proved that programmes that promoted gender parity in performance, such as the sanitary dignity programme which encourages the retention of girls in school as well as their attendance and performance, were paying dividends. She called on all provinces to strengthen these interventions, especially in rural and township areas.

“This academic performance highlights the critical role social protection and pro-poor interventions play in addressing intergenerational poverty  and  child well-being.

“When comparing learners who were still receiving their grant, active recipients, in their matric year and those who whose grant had stopped, inactive recipients, due to their age, active social grant beneficiaries were found to have a substantially higher pass rate as compared to inactive social grant beneficiaries, with an overall pass rate of 87.20% and 75.22%, respectively,” said Zulu.