17 Dec 2024

The Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) pass rate should at least improve by five per cent in next year’s examinations.

The new target set by the ministry was announced by the Minister of Child Welfare and Basic Education, Dr Nono Kgafela-Mokoka when giving a statement on the 2024 PSLE in Parliament on Monday.

The minister said although the target was small, it was however worthwhile considering the current 2024 PSLE results.

The minister said the results indicated an improvement in performance of 1.3 per cent at Grades A to C compared to that of the previous year.

She said notwithstanding the 1.3 per cent improvement in the performance, the increase was achieved amid dilapidated infrastructure in schools, low morale of teachers, some pupils who travelled long distances to school and school feeding menu that was not nutritious amongst others.

As such, she said the ministry aimed to attend to all issues and engage all stakeholders particularly teachers, on the working conditions and increase the intake at pre-primary school level by providing adequate infrastructure.

Also, Dr Kgafela-Mokoka said there were more than enough qualified pre-primary teachers in the country.

She said government would provide learners with transport to school in all areas where the learners walked long distances and review the feeding menu to make it more nutritious and provide two meals per day in schools.

The minister said a total of 53 044 candidates sat for the PSLE compared to 52 266 candidates in 2023.

She said this represented a 1.5 per cent increase in candidature, which was noted in government schools as well as private school centres while a decline was observed in Out of School Education and Training (OSET) centres.

Dr Kgafela-Mokoka further said the conduct of the 2024 PSLE was concluded without any disruptions except for some cases of maladministration at a few centres.

“All the concerned centres will be cautioned, monitored, and supported in future examination series,” she said and further noted that 2024 PSLE results indicated that the percentage of candidates obtaining Grade E or better stood at 99.8 per cent which was the same as that of the previous year, which implied that 0.1 per cent of the candidates were unclassified, therefore assigned letter U.

Ms Kgafela-Mokoka said the percentage of candidates obtaining overall Grade D or better dropped by 0.2 per cent from 91.9 per cent in 2023 to 91.7 per cent in 2024.

The percentage of candidates obtaining Grade C or better increased by 1.3 per cent from 72 per cent in 2023 to 73.3 per cent in 2024, said Dr Kgafela-Mokoka.

Furthermore, she said the percentage of candidates who obtained Grade B or better, increased by 2.2 per cent from 38.1 per cent in 2023 to 40.3 per cent in 2024.

Ms Kgafela-Mokoka said similarly, the percentage of candidates obtaining Grade A increased by 0.8 per cent from 20.3 per cent in 2023 to 21.1 per cent this year. Ends