The Western Cape education department says its investments in early learning are paying off after its 2025 grade 3 learners achieved the best systemic test results to date.
The grade 3 pass rate for maths was 62% and for language was 51.2%, a big improvement on learners’ performance during the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2021, the grade 3 pass rates for maths and language were just 44.3% and 36.9%, respectively.
“More children in our province can read and calculate effectively than ever before, which gives them a better chance of succeeding in higher grades and in their post-school careers” said Western Cape education MEC David Maynier.
Western Cape was the only province to set aside a specific budget for interventions to address the learning losses caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to severe disruptions to schooling. It is also the only province to administer systemic tests for language and maths, which have been taken by children in grades 3, 6 and 9 every year since 2002 with the exception of 2020, the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic.
These tests enable the provincial education department to gauge the effect of its interventions, such as the “back on track” programme launched after the impact of the pandemic became evident.
In 2021 the test results showed the loss of face-to-face teaching time during the pandemic had reversed years of steady progress. South Africa recorded its first case of Covid-19 in March 2020 and the government imposed intermittent school closures as it sought to slow transmission of the virus.
Pupils lost an estimated 155 school days in 2020 and 2021, equivalent to three-quarters of a school year. In a study published in 2022, researchers estimated most pupils were a year behind the level they would have been if not for the pandemic.
In response, the Western Cape piloted a structured language programme in 50 schools in 2021, which was rolled out to all primary schools in 2024. It added extra time for reading and maths within the school day for all children in grades 1 to 3 and provided extra classes for children in higher grades to catch up on lost learning time.
The Western Cape systemic tests set a pass mark of 50% and are written by just under a quarter of the province’s learners. In 2025 the pass rate for grade 6 maths remained largely unchanged at 41.6%, compared with 41% in the year before, while the pass rate for grade 6 language improved, rising to 44.5% compared with 41.5% in 2024.
Performance in grade 9, however, lagged the lower grades, with the maths pass rate sitting at just 24.9%, slightly up on 23.4% the year before. For language, the pass rate dropped to 43.6%, compared with 48.8% in 2024. The grade 9 language results are worse than they were before the pandemic, when the pass rate stood at 53.6%.
The department said it was conducting an analysis of the grade 9 language results to determine which areas learners were struggling with so they could be addressed.
Servaas van der Berg, head of the Research on Socio- Economic Policy unit at Stellenbosch University, said the fact the grade 3 cohort of 2025 had not yet started school when Covid-19 struck meant they had been spared the disrupted learning that affected older children. This likely contributed to their relatively strong performance compared with grade 3 pupils in previous years, he said.
By the same token, the poor showing for the grade 9 learners suggested these children, who were in primary school at the height of the pandemic, were still struggling to overcome learning gaps in their foundational years, he said.
Tamar Kahn
www.businessday.co.za