The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) has dished out 53 awards in 12 categories to schools for improvement and excellence in the department’s systemic tests held last year in October.
Systemic tests measure the performance of pupils in language and maths in Grade 3, 6 and 9.
El Shaddai Christian School in Durbanville won an award for overall excellence in independent schools.
Durbanville Voorbereidingskool and Durbanville Primary were awarded for excellence in Grade 3, where schools do not have Grade 6.
Education MEC Debbie Schäfer said: “A quality education enables people to gain access to an improved quality of life and a better chance of employment, or the chance to create employment for others.
“A quality education starts with all pupils having mastered literacy and numeracy at internationally benchmarked levels, with their education having included information literacy to prepare them for the modern economy.”
Ms Schäfer said the tests showed the department’s strategies to improve the quality of teaching and cut the school drop-out rate in the province were paying off.
“The maths results last year were particularly pleasing, the pass rates increasing from 2014 by 3.6% in Grade 3, 7.3% in Grade 6 and 7.3% in Grade 9,” she said.
Just over 229 715 pupils from 1 495 public and independent schools in the province wrote the systemic tests and 6 114 pupils from 89 independent schools also took part.