Minister of basic education Angie Motshekga is expected to announce the 2020 matric results on Monday afternoon.

Although the leakage of  mathematics and physical science (both paper 2) threatened the integrity of the exams, last week Umalusi (The quality assurance body) approved the release of 2020 results.

It was the first time that the department administered a combined examination which saw more than a million candidates sitting for their final matric exams.

Deputy minister Reginah Mhaule said from Tuesday, candidates can collect their statements of results from their schools.

“Class of 2020, are you ready? You have done your best under difficult circumstances and we wish you all the best with your results,” Mhaule said.

Gauteng education MEC Panyaza Lesufi also shared the numbers of the provincial learners who enrolled for critical subjects. 

As the minister prepares to release results later on Monday, here are the numbers of Gauteng learners who enrolled for critical subjects over the years. Maths literacy saw the highest increase of enrollments. In 2008  there were 49,726 pupils who enrolled for it and the number had grown to 74,269 pupils in 2020  followed by history which saw 15,280 pupils in 2008 and 40,795 in 2020. Geography also saw an increase of 50,293 pupils last year from 34,350 pupils in 2008.

In the same period, maths went down from 54,108 to 38,496, the number of pupils who enrolled for physics also drastically dropped from 42,664 to 27,663, followed by accounting, which saw the numbers dropping from 35,139 pupils in 2008 to 17,945.

Lesufi said there was a need to push for more pupils to study maths and science.

Johannes Motona, president of Professional Educators Union, said since the grade 12 class of 2020 have been the group that learnt under very difficult and unusual situation, they will not be shocked if the performance drops dismally. “We need to take cognisance that they were denied their teaching and learning time by Covid-19 pandemic,” Motona said.