Local matriculants set out bubbling over with mixed emotions early this morning to receive their matric results.

The matric class of 2015 has achieved a national pass rate of 70.7% down from 75.8% achieved in 2014.

While KZN is one of the low-performing provinces with a 60.7% pass rate, that’s down a whopping 9% from last year making it the second worst performing province.

It was reported that this is the second consecutive year that KZN’s results have not fared well with the 2014 pass rate having dropped by 7.7% compared to 2013 results.

“KZN is equal to five provinces in terms of learner numbers, so this means they would produce more Bachelor passes because they have more learners in the province,” said Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga at the release of the results in Johannesburg on Tuesday night.

About 800 000 pupils sat for their final exams last year.

“The five provinces did extremely well and for that we are very grateful and appreciative. But we must say the biggest provinces did dismally badly and we are committing that we’ll go there,” she said.

It’s said that if the “progressed learners” (promoted to Grade 12 without meeting the passing criteria) had not been added to the total, the pass rate would have been 74%.

She added that the three worst performing provinces are also the country’s three biggest rural provinces, caused a 9% drop in the pass rate as they had 53% of the country’s pupils.

Basic Education Director General Mathanzima Mweli said the largest number of candidates came from KwaZulu-Natal, followed by Gauteng and Limpopo.

The Western Cape is the top performing province – scoring a pass rate of 84.7%.

Pass rates per province.

1. Western Cape – 84.7 %
2. Gauteng – 84.2%
3. Free State – 81.6 %
4. North West – 81.5%
5. Mpumalanga – 78.6 %
6. Northern Cape – 69.4%
7. Limpopo – 65.9%
8. KwaZulu-Natal – 60.7%
9. Eastern Cape – 56.8 %