The national matric pass rate has dropped from 75.8% in 2014 to 70.7% in 2015.
The Western Cape was the best performing province in the 2015 National Senior Certificate exams with an 84.7% pass rate.
Gauteng was second with an 84.2% pass rate.
The Free State was the third an 81.6% pass rate,
North West came fourth with 81.5%.
Fifth was Mpumalanga with 78.6%.
Sixth the Northern Cape with 69.4%.
Seventh Limpopo with 65.9%.
Eighth KwaZulu-Natal with 60.7%.
The worst performing province was the Eastern Cape with a pass rate of 56.8%.
@BOG: I think the transition from JJS to GCB proves that “Evolution” is valid.
No to be honest even us dumb QC men know that at best “Evolution” is a thumb suck at best.
@Gungets Tuft:
you won’t be disappointed.If you are then my taste in movies remains questionable.
@Playa: I’ll have to watch it …. anything with Ms Johansen …. and ou Morgan is a good actor….
@Gungets Tuft: I recently watched the movie ‘Lucy’ with Morgan Freeman and Scarlett Johansen.Had to watch it a second time straight after to finally get it.Forgive me,I’m a Dalian.Bear with me I will eventually get this conversation just don’t be annoyed when I bring it up in 6 month’s time
@BOG: And just a point of correction – Carbon 14 does not have a lifespan of 5730 years. It has a 1/2 life of 5730 years – which you no doubt know is the time it takes for 1/2 the C14 to deplete. Not that it matters – even 60,000 years won’t do it for you, even though it does kick a bit of a dent in the biblical creation theory. There’s still a door wide open for the Antideluvians though … I bet they wore anti-carbon suits when the visited ..
@BOG: We will agree to disagree then. I can’t afford the tin foil … which is what I would need if I followed Walter Veith’s opinion that the moon race was all about the Russians and Americans trying to retrieve advanced technology left behind by a super alien race called the Antideluvians.
@star: My lightie is staying in Durban – Varsity College systems development diploma. He applied at Rhodes and still has a spot there for another week for him to change his mind, but he won’t.
@Gungets Tuft: Hallelujah!!!!!!
@Gungets Tuft:
@Gungets Tuft: Where is your boy going this year? A lot of College boys seem to be going to Stellies.
@Gungets Tuft: Not surprizingly, you choose to attack the man, Walter Veith, and not the contents of what he says.He can precisely say why evolution is a deceptive lie. What he does say about the socalled “conspiracy theories”, he backs with evidence and sources. And by researching the minutes of the UN, its agencies and front organizations, it can be verified. That is my background.But to brush aside something as a “conspiracy theory”, is often much easier than to prove it wrong. Your comment , is evidence that you understand nothing about international politics. Fred Hoyle is indeed an astronomer, but with a physics back ground. He can hardly be regarded as ignorant on the subject of evolution. But then, he was just one of many scientists. Are you now really suggesting that Im isolated in my opinion about the socalled “missing links”? And it was not I who raised the matter of evolution on a rugby blog-I responded to a comment regarding the matter. There is much evidence of manipulation among evolutionists of data to get the preconceived or desired readings, eg Carbon 14 , having a life span of 5730 years, yet is found in coal and diamonds, evolutionists claim to be millions of years old. The same with DNA mutations and Fossil DNA. No, Sir, you should chill, but when a deceptive lie is presented as a scientific fact, then dont expect it to pass unanswered- even on a rugby blog. Evolution does have the habit of presenting its ugly face everywhere.
@BOG: Fred Hoyle – https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle
Sir Fred Hoyle FRS (24 June 1915 – 20 August 2001)[1] was an English astronomer noted primarily for the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and his often controversial stances on other scientific matters—in particular his rejection of the “Big Bang” theory, a term coined by him on BBC radio. While Hoyle was well-regarded for his works on nucleosynthesis and science popularization, his career was also noted for the controversial positions he held on a wide range of scientific issues, often in direct opposition to the prevailing theories supported by the majority of the scientific community.[2][3][4]
Your question about the missing links is evidence that you understand nothing at all about evolution, or the processes that lead to it. Not going to start a google war but given the zero understanding of natural selection, mutation and migration, and how they fit into evolution, nothing to be achieved on a rugby blog. Perhaps start with sorting out which Fred Hoyle we are talking about.
As for dating science, it’s accurate enough to prove that the earth is older than a few thousand, as well as prove the age of early hominids closely enough to show that the creation theory is ….. well ….. like a bunch of body parts conjured up in someone’s imagination magically slotting together to “create” humans as we know them.
And I would advise that you don’t quote Walter Veith. He might have “recanted” on his studies when he turned to religion, but he’s also a raging conspiracy theorist with enough off the wall theories to kill a buffalo.
Chill, I don’t mind you believing what you do. It’s not important that we agree.
@Gungets Tuft: I asked a@Gungets Tuft: I asked a question above, regarding measuring of age- I see that was ignored. Fred Hoyle was not an astronomer. Thirdly, looking at the well known demonstration, of ape on all fours, “evolving” to man, I know that there is evidence of millions of the ape and billions of the man, but I see no evidence of the few characters in between. Transition seems to be a problem? Speaking of the big bang, how exactly, did things begin?One single cell? Prof Walter Veith was a committed evolutionist and presented it at university- at the WCU. But eventually, he had to concede that he , along with his collegues, had been bullshitting the students. Of course, this truth made him extremely unpopular.Wilfred Hahn, former scientist and currently an international investor, said the following: “No, evolution is a theory. In fact,as evidence shows, it is a desperate theory as it does not rest on scientific facts Evolutionists can only offer speculative theories and imaginings that have no evidential support. So to say that evolution is a scientific theory is even to mock the legitimate historical discipline of science” Like it or not , there is no scientific evidence for evolution and its an absolute disgrace and obvious deception that its being presented as such in many schools
@BOG: Fred Hoyle was an astronomer, not an expert on evolution. He was commenting on the Big Bang, not evolution or natural selection. Those who argue against evolution and natural selection use a linear, religious, basis with less science than I learned in school. Those arguing against it can present zero science while doing so, they just call into question the presented science. Like it or not, we are evolving.
@BOG: Ask the Scientists in the Cradle of Human Kind, I’m no expert. I do know our brains are elastic (plasticity is probably a better term for it) and can be shaped via CBT etc, so the can change shape physically…
@Grasshopper: Darwin, in Origin of Species, offered that as a theory, not as factual science. Not surprizing , many disagree. Dr Fred Hoyle, the British scientist, said that there is a better chance of the Boeing 747 coming into being after a storm in a junk yard, than life originating from “evolution”. How exactly was that “3.5 million” determined? Radiometric dating?
@Grasshopper: Darwin, in Origin of Species, offered that as a theory, not as factual science. Not surprizing , many disagree. Dr Fred Hoyle, the British scientist, said that there is a better chance of the Boeing 747 coming into being after a storm in a junk yard, than life originating from “evolution”
@BOG: Homonid, Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus etc…..read Darwin. Around 3.5 million years or so…
@Grasshopper: “Millions of years of evolution”? Where exactly did you learn that crap? If its an exact science, exactly how many “millions” of years?
@Grasshopper: “Millions of years of evolution”? Where exactly did you learn that crap? If its an exact science, exactly how many “millions” of years?
The pass rate dropped and the standards even more so. Judge them in the future? By all accounts, there will not be an economy left to judge them against, unless you cal “junk” an economy.
@Grasshopper: Ja, College haven’t documented all, but 5 with 8 distinctions, 7 boys with 7 distinctions. Don’t know the rest.
@Gungets Tuft: Agreed! Well taking Westville results (as they are the only ones to have documented them in a nice infographic already), they had 16 boys with 7 or more distinctions and 23 with 6 or more. So if you take 6A’s as a mark of a clever kid, they have almost 10%….
@Grasshopper: And I think that 7 A’s is a relatively small percentage – maybe about 5% of kids?
@Grasshopper: There’s you mistake – thinking the cream of the crop (for what you are looking for) is the guy that gets 7 A’s, or graduates Cum Laude. It’s very very seldom the case, unless you’re hiring academics. If you want them to burn rubber, look for the problem solvers. The academics generally confront problems by documenting them impeccably, collating all the relevant data and them publishing a hypothesis for the problem solvers to sort out.
Give me the choice between 2 BSC Comp Sci grads, one Cum Laude and with 20 published papers, or the other with 60% average that fixes his own car, I know who I’m picking. I don’t need someone who can describe whats broken, I need the bugger that can fix it. Almost inevitably, so do you.
I told the girl-child straight up – anything over 50% means she’s neglecting her friends. She didn’t completely take me up on that, but she left no stone unturned in the quest to enjoy every aspect of varsity. She has fellow students who think the Rat and Parrot are part of a zoology class. Eeisch.
@Gungets Tuft: Yep and it has to do with a ‘little’ thing called the world wide web that our friend Sir Berners Lee created in 1991. Knowledge is now available to all and very quickly. What we learnt in the World Book or Encyclopedia Brittanica the kids of today just Google. However, it doesn’t mean their brains are any more evolved or better, that we all know takes millions of years of evolution to change. Point is the standards of the papers need to be increased then if they so clever because every Tom, Dick or Harry getting 7A’s and an A aggregate doesn’t make an employer feel they are in fact the cream of the crop.
@Playa: 100%.
I’ll get a copy of the Maths core papers from this year, send them to ou Hopper and see how he does with the low standards.
University – 50% it is, made up (in BSC that is) or year marks, practical marks and then the end-of-year exam.
I think people are blind to increasing standards around us. What Chris Barnard was shagged worldwide for achieving, surgeons are doing all over the place now. Engineers have gone from the pinnacle of putting a man in space and dumping him in the ocean to returning them to a landing strip, refueling, and sending them back again. We are all ho-hum about it because we’ve lived with the progress, but what has been achieved in 40 years is mind blowing. Even since ou Hopper drank himself through matric we’ve gone from hopeful chemo and radio therapy for cancer to gene therapy. The graduates of today are learning, and applying, what we were reading in science fiction novels. It’s small wonder we can’t keep up.
8)
@Playa: Both you and Grassy make valid points. I don’t think you should compare era’s with one another. There are too many variables that play a part.
It does seem easier to achieve a subject distinction than, lets say in my era. Are the kids smarter than in my day, probably, are they wiser, I don’t think so. The total numbers of matriculants has really soared from my days. This obviously has direct bearing on the potential to achieve a distinction.
@Grasshopper: Seriously – you’re equating the general knowledge gained in Matric to the specific class and practical work done in a medical degree. I’ve heard this comparison before and it’s total bullsh#t, sorry. Come up with something else.
Do you think your doctor, or your wife’s gynae, got 100% for everything. Did you even ask?
In 1977 I got 2 B’s, a C or two, and a few D’s. Clearly standards slipped @#$%&^ badly between then and 1996. What has become of the world. Next thing we will allow those low class grads of 1996 to be directors of companies, interview new grads, even affect their futures by rejecting them as illiterate …
@Playa: I wish I could but I don’t have that info. IEB was introduced around my time because teachers were concerned the standards of the NSC would drop and they have, quite significantly. Our era was focused on more academic syllabi, pure maths and science. These days it’s probably more practical application of the subjects. One could say the pure versions are harder as they cannot be related to real world situations. Comparing era’s is hard, but without a doubt the NSC standards have dropped. My sister has taught both IEB and NSC also A levels in the UK and in her opinion it has dropped in NSC, less so in IEB…
@Grasshopper: Ok, how about you do a comparison between your class of 1996, and the class of 1977 results? If the class of ’77 did better than your class, you can dismiss my utterings as hogwash. But if your class did better – then by your ascertion, things were a lot easier in your year than 19 years before, and it has nothing to do with just a bunch of brainier kids that grew up in the 80s with much more information at hand, television and other technologies.
@Playa: Let’s put some perspective here, in 1996 I came 35th at Glenwood out of 220 (having come 4th in 2nd form, the booze and girls affected me from 4th form upwards). I eventually attained 5 B’s and 1 A (Geography). We only had about 15x A aggregates. These days schools with over 200 matrics are getting close to 50 A aggregates, that is around 20% of the students, it’s ridiculous. The Dux got 7A’s. These days kids are getting 9A’s and schools have about 20 getting more than 6A’s. If that doesn’t indicate easier or more watered down subjects I’m not sure what does. The Dux went on to study at Oxford….
@Gungets Tuft: I was just poining out to Star that it isn’t fair to compare a 1981 dux scholar’s achievements to a kid who got his matric results 2 days ago and then ascertain that they were ‘smarter’.
I’m with you on this one. Even us 90s high scholars have nothing on these kids today. I am not sure where Grassy is recruiting but he is very welcome to come visit the university just up the road from where Im typing this and he’d be blown away. He’d be satisfied with just the B or even aggregate students here. These kids may spell badly because of all this social media lingo, but hell the stuff in those brains was not imaginable in my time. And we had some smart kids back then.
@Grasshopper: That’s more like it. The pass in varsity is still 50%.
With the exception of one b*tch of a course at UCT called ‘Thinking About Business: TAB101″ – the pass mark for that was 40%. That course was philosophy on steroids, and only the weedheads pulled off 1st class passes.
@Playa: Maybe I am confusing it with my degree pass mark which was definitely 50%. Imagine going to a doctor who only knows 50% of the work needed, eish!
@Playa: 35 years!!!!!
If I’m still around I’ll have hired someone to chew my food for me and won’t remember my name
The graduates of the next 10 years are going to blow us away with how good they are.
@star: Let’s judge this group in 35 years’ time then shall we?
I agree with you though that let’s let the current group do it’s thang
@Grasshopper: Correction – pass mark was 40% for Higher Grade and 33.3% for Standard Grade. In the 90s at least that was the case. I think 25% was the pass mark for Lower Grade (which is where I suspect Spear got his distinctions) before it was done away with
@Grasshopper: B.Comm and BSC – some in Computer Science, others in Business Management. I consult to corporates that employ across the board and I am generally impressed.
I remember what I was like just out of varsity, I shudder to think what my employers thought about me (in one case I know – the oke called me in after 6 months articles and gently told me that accounting was definitely not for me – to my relief because I thought it was just me). I think you’re looking at your current self, with all (OK, most of
) the rough edges ground off, then the rest polished by 10 years of smacking your face against your mistakes, and comparing it to a new grad who has never worked, and expecting too much.
If you’re employing people then teaching, mentoring, guiding, polishing … that’s your job. If that’s not what you want to do, then poach the guys that have 5 – 8 years experience and pay the money. Choices.
@Grasshopper:
Was definitely 40% in my day. Lower for Afrikaans – 33% if memory serves?
@Gungets Tuft: you must be working with the Chemical Engineering grads because the CA grads and BComm grads we get are pretty useless. Our pass mark in general tests and exams was 50%…
@Rugger fan: Buy a donkey. It was a little rough at the end, my lightie managed to have a huge crash off a skateboard the day before his last exam, wrote under neurosurgeon permission having been discharged from Entabeni at 6.30am after a night of observation. Fractured skull, top level concussion, still got 70% for English. Don’t know how
@Grasshopper: Pass mark was never 50%. Perhaps in home language but not all subjects. You could pass matric with 50% home language and 40% for everything else.
We have this argument every year, consistent at least. I believe that today’s graduates are every bit as good as when I was 21, we didn’t have to cope with 1/4 of what these kids do. Perhaps it was different for the 90’s kids, who knows, but I work closely with many of today’s grads and they’re very very switched on.
@Playa: I interview some of these kids with 6 A’s and they can can’t spell or write a decent business email. It’s shocking! We battle to find interns. A few of the top guys in my years went on to get Rhodes, Elsie Ballot & Smuts scholarships. We were certainly not dumb and a pass mark was 50%.
@Playa: I reject your statement out of hand.
We were certainly not dumber. In my year at Westville in 1981 we were lucky to have 20% of the As currently achieved and yet our dux came top at Stanford and became a professor at MIT.I have lost count of the business leaders both local and international that were produced in that so called ” dumber year”. Maybe we should just say comparisons are odious and let each year do its ” thang” as they say in the classics. 
@Grasshopper: I’m sure we can get you a few past papers to write – probably get an independent marker to mark it and then we can see the proof ourselves ?
Shall we start with Maths Paper 1 & 2 ?
@GreenBlooded:
@Speartackle:
The other 2 were Jimmy Abbot and Leon Schuster if I’m not mistaken?
@Speartackle: You special kid you
I was one of only 3 pupils countrywide to achieve 7 distinctons back in 1966
@Grasshopper: Do we ever consider that maybe our generation was jus a bit dumber, or at least not as smart as we tend to make it out to be?
@Grasshopper: Do we ever consider that maybe our generation was jus a bit dumber?
@Rugger fan: Thank you Glad it is all over.
@Grasshopper: I agree. Today I honoured a 12 year old promise to my son and showed him my matric certificate which was seen as a good result. Suffice to say he beat me and that I would not have qualified for Varsity with my results.
@GreenBlooded: I wholeheartedly agree with your statement.
I know this will ruffle a few feathers but get the current boys to write a paper from 20 years ago the pass rate would be about 30%. I see Westville got 521 subject distinctions & 48 A aggregates from 252 learners. In 96 when I wrote if a school had 15 A aggregates it was considered awesome…..how times have changed…
Trusting that the boys and their parents on the forum did well – well done to gungets and Cyndi in particular (and pedantic on the earlier IEB results)
Hardly surprising when one considers that education is run by party loyalists where priority #1 is to snout around at the feeding trough. Appoint a top career educatonalist like Prof Johanathan Jansens as Minister of education, giving him sweeping powers to hire and fire who he likes and the improvement will be mind-numbing!!
Pretty rubbish results really, 30% failing leaves around 240,000 matrics needing to write again.