Good afternoon and welcome to our 2023 results presentation. Just a few pointers before we start, because it is a live webcast, what we'll do is take questions at the end. The line is open for anybody who's watching online to submit any questions. We will try and answer all of the questions, but if we could ask those in the audience perhaps to hold over questions until the end as well, then we'll take them all and deal with them then. Thanks very much. This is indeed an auspicious occasion. This is my final presentation. The reason is because if the new CEO is gonna get his picture up, I had to have a picture up as well.
It gives me great pleasure to introduce Geoff, who as you well all know, has joined us with effect from and taken over as CEO from the first of March. We have been having a handover period, but obviously it makes good sense for me to do these results. I think, we are really indeed very fortunate to have Geoff join us. I know the board is delighted. He has a fantastic background and experience, track record with blue chip multinational organizations. His expertise in the area that is really gonna make a significant contribution to ADvTECH. He has international business experience, a strong marketing background, and an impressive track record with a number of organizations. We're indeed very lucky to have Geoff, and Geoff, welcome.
Obviously he would be available to answer any questions that anybody might have for him at the end as well. Okay. Right. Without further ado, let's move on. Of course, it is with great pleasure actually that I can announce our results for 2023. The top line of which I'm sure you're probably all familiar with, but a really nice performance for us right across the board. As emphasized, if we look at the divisional performance, where revenue and operating profit's up in all categories, we will dive into the detail on each of these divisional results in a little more detail later on.
It really is encouraging that now I think for at least the second or maybe even the third year in a row, all of our divisions have performed strongly, and in line with our expectations, leading to a really good result. Of course, the fundamental driver of performance in our business is enrollment growth. That is probably the most critical factor that we have, and as you can see, we have continued the trend. This is the results, the enrollment growth that we experienced for the 2023 year that underpins the results that we're seeing here today. In schools in South Africa, we had a really good 6% enrollment growth, 10% in the rest of Africa, giving us 7% overall in the schools division. Tertiary at 4% and overall total group enrollment at 5% for 2023.
What I am pleased, that's in the record book, that's done. 2024, of course, is extremely important for us, and I'm really delighted to report to you that we've had another strong enrollment season. Okay. Schools, again, another good performance at 5%. Schools in the rest of Africa at 4%, probably a surprise in a sense because we do anticipate that's going to be the engine room of growth in the future. There are some very good reasons for that I will explain a little later on. We do anticipate that that's a short-term aberration overall, and as I say, there are good reasons for it. I'll explain those a little later. Schools division overall at 4%. Tertiary up with a really good enrollment period at 7%.
You can see the wonderful balance that we get in our business. Overall enrollment growth up at 6% versus last year's 5%. All in all, ADvTECH in good shape and that enrollment growth for 2024 is extremely encouraging. Okay. I think another key feature of the results for us is the fact that we've had good margin improvement in the critical areas. Something that we set out to achieve and has certainly been delivered over a number of years. Again, we'll look at the margin by division in a little more detail later on and show the progress that we've made. I think all of this is particularly pleasing given the operating environment that we are in. We all know that the South African economy has underperformed by any measure you choose to use.
The tragedy, I suppose, is that as we look forward, we don't see much changing in that area. All of the forecast predictions for the economy to grow are at and around the 1% level, depending on where you read. Unemployment remains unacceptably high, something that I wanna touch on in this presentation as well. Inflation, not sure that we've beaten back the monster yet. That perhaps after some relatively good news there, the most recent readings were slightly up. We do expect that perhaps to plateau, and we do hope it will decline, but of course, one can never be certain. Still running at relatively high levels. On the other hand, we see Africa, not without its problems, but what we do see is significantly higher levels of economic growth.
You know, the GDP is somewhere between 4% and 4.3%. In fact, DD and I were looking this week, I think, at Kenya's revised forecast from 6.1% - 6.3% GDP growth. You know, would that South Africa could ever achieve such levels, it would be wonderful for us. We are confident that all of the key drivers of our kind of performance in our sector and our business are really positive in the rest of Africa. You look at population growth, you look at urbanization, you look at the fact that there are governments that battle to provide quality education, and on top of that, you overlay good economic growth. We are quite confident that if we're careful and selective, that there are enormous opportunities for us in Africa.
We are, and remain, quite bullish about how we can actually realize those opportunities and continue the good trend that ADvTECH has established. What are the drivers of private education? Well, I think it's well recorded, and I'm pretty sure that everybody is well aware of the fact that the public sector really is battling severe headwinds. For some time now, there has been significant concern expressed about public schools and the quality and the standard. The stat there refers to the fact that we ranked third last out of 64 countries in math and science. These sort of statistics are well represented and I think are understood. The tragedy is we don't really seem to be making any progress.
You know, we celebrated the fact that the matric pass rate was higher this year, but actually when you start to take into account how many children have dropped out of the system before they even got to matric, it's really not something that we should necessarily be celebrating as a country yet. On the other hand, our higher education system is also starting to show signs of great stress. We often say within the business that they're sailing into the headwinds and the tailwinds are behind us. I think if you look at these degree completion rates, in the public sector, you know, that's actually for those who complete qualifications in the requisite time. In other words, if you run a three-year undergraduate degree, you complete it in three years, you can actually see that those percentages are really low.
For us, the IIE, substantially higher. You know, we are an order of magnitude better in terms of people who qualify within the defined time period. Still not, I think, where we would want to be, and if one compared globally, that's probably on the lower side and we've got work to do. On the other hand, if you think great number of those students of ours actually come out of a public system that's truly battling, then I think it's understandable. But what this represents, of course, is the fact that the quality of the education, the student-centric approach that we take is substantially better, I think, than students could normally expect, generally speaking, in the public system. I understand there are exceptions, by location, by faculty, but overall, as a system, we can see the problems that the public sector faces. Okay.
Not surprising then that we've seen over quite a significant period of time now, a rapid growth in the private education, both in schools and in higher education, as parents seek out better opportunities for quality education for their children. We are lucky. We're very fortunate in a sense is that what is essentially a negative for the nation ends up being a positive driver of our business. Despite very tough economy, it just goes to show how much people are prepared to sacrifice to ensure that their children do get the right level of right quality of education. Another feature that we've been operating in, and I'm sure is kind of topical and people would want to understand, is the impact that load shedding has on our business. Again, we're quite fortunate.
We are not significant users of power. On the other hand, we do depend on reliable electricity, and more and more so with our information systems. On the other hand, we've done and put into place are some, I think, really quite exciting and innovative initiatives that reflect our obsession with trying, to control every single element of cost and ensure that there is no wastage or duplication within our system. We use that, to try and drive the value equation for our parents, particularly in taking responsible pricing level. One of the most exciting initiatives I think is through our properties division and using technology, we've centralized the ability to control, monitor and control, electricity and water usage, through the Internet of Things.
You can see in doing so, we can monitor every single one of our quite considerable numbers of sites across multiple geographies. We can understand we can turn off lights, we can turn off geysers, we can monitor usage in terms of water and identify where there potentially are leaks. You'll see some of the stats there as to kind of the productivity gains that we've had. We've reduced our electricity usage by 7%, our water consumption by a similar level. On a per capita basis, that actually represents quite significant productivity gains. It's an example of how we're managing within these kind of scenarios. Not least to say is that actually each of our sites has a generating capacity in for load shedding, so we can continue operations even despite the outages. We are now...
We finished piloting in the first five sites, my group, Stoffel, solar. Now that some of those regulations have changed, we can take advantage of being able to put power back into the grid. Having done those five pilot sites, we now are in a much better kind of position to understand what the implications. I must admit, I think the latest news was that we were hoping we might be able to sort of classify into three categories and roll out rapidly. It looks like every single implementation is gonna have to be done on an individualized basis because there are some unique elements to them.
However, the plans are well advanced, and I anticipate that we'll be making some very good progress in having solar power available to most of our sites within a reasonable time period. Okay. Our financial performance then, and it does give me pleasure to show our revenue continuing the trend that we've had for the last few years, 13% up, driven primarily, as I say, by volume and responsible pricing. Of course, our drive for efficiency, elimination of wastage, leveraging the scale of our operations and the operating leverage that we do get with good volume growth, we've been able to show, I think, really good operating profit growth and continuing the trend that we've had over the last four, five years. Okay. Pleasing, as I said already, is the operating margin, group margin up another percent.
I think what's important now is just to try and understand how the various divisions contribute to that because, of course, the resourcing revenue, particularly in Africa, has grown so much, and it is a unique type of business that tends to have an impact on skewing our group margin. You can see that the educational businesses, the margin is up at 23.8% versus our resourcing business at 6.3%. Again, just to remind, that margin is low. We are required through IFRS accounting regulations to recognize the revenue of the payrolls that we run on behalf of the companies that we represent through the geographies of Africa, which means that the margin on that business is lower. That's the difference.
If we split it out, so we can understand the components of our business and how they perform. If we look at the educational businesses overall at 23.8%, you can see the schools division at 21.4% and tertiary at 26.3%. If you look at that performance in tertiary, it's really positive. Maybe a little bit too much in the margin there as we've recovered from the debtors problem that we had at the last year, but then conversely, the 2022 is probably a little bit lower than it was because of that same problem. Actually, it's still the guidance we give is around that 25%-26% level. Every time we talk about that margin, the tertiary margin creeps up a bit, but it really is very comfortable.
We're particularly proud, and it may be a little bit overrepresented because of the debtors recovery. Didier, true? Okay. If we look at the schools and split it out now into South Africa and Africa, again, South Africa making good progress, another 1%. If I had to express some concern, I would actually say I'd like to see that moving even more rapidly up. Mike, Maurice, Christo Hertz. We wanna get to that mid-20s. On the other hand, it is a really solid and a terrific performance. I think you know, the remarkable figure in there is, of course, the schools in Africa. If you look at where that margin is at now, 30%.
We've always said that we believe that the Africa business ought to be more profitable in reflecting the risk that we have in some of those geographies and those markets. But this business division of ours is truly starting to deliver now. Well done to Jaco and his team. It's impressive, and we do believe that that positive trend will continue. If we look at the contribution of revenue and profit by segment, again, the sort of skewed revenue contribution by the resourcing division is the reflection of that payroll that we recognize. Nevertheless, it shows the growing business in Africa. Again, a nice healthy balance between our tertiary and our school's business, both in terms of revenue and profit contribution. We're very comfortable in the sense of that.
All of this means that our earnings per share is up 20%, continuing the trend of the past years, the compounded growth rate and earnings of 25%. Perhaps it's almost sad that we feel the need to show this slide. What we are very pleased about is that even in US dollars, given the volatility of our country of our currency and the volatility it experiences, that we've made really positive and I think good progress even measured in US dollar terms. Up 11%, compounded growth rate 16% over the time period. I think giving a measure of the value and the worth of the business.
The divisional performance, starting off with tertiary, as I say, another great performance from a really solid set of well-positioned brands, all of which are performing well, and all of whom I think have some wonderful opportunities, as we look forward. It's a comprehensive portfolio of not only qualifications, but modes of delivery. You'll remember that we say anytime, anywhere, and any place of the student's choosing, we would desire to deliver quality education. Our portfolio of brands allows us to do that right across the spectrum of qualifications. Revenue up 10%, operating profit up 16%, and the margin at 26.4%. A really good performance from a division that has performed consistently well now for a number of years. Okay. Enrollment growth, we're up 7%.
I'd say a really good enrollment period for us in 2024. We can look forward to a solid performance this year as well. I know this is of keen interest to people. Our online enrollments are showing growth, 17%, and you can see the compounded growth rate in online. It is important. One of the key features that we're finding in online is that there is a preference, perhaps undergraduate degree for campus life, and certainly a lot of demand for postgraduate qualifications in the online space, and I think that makes great sense. You know, holistic education experience is often one which is campus driven. If you have to do it online, that's fine. In many respects, the learning environment is enhanced by a campus type environment.
I'm sure all of you who experienced similar, perhaps, would understand. On the other hand, once you're into the work environment and you want to enhance your qualifications and improve, then online is a perfect way for you to follow postgraduate qualifications. We're seeing that sort of shift and trend in terms of our online versus campus environment. Healthy growth. To remind you that every single one of the new qualifications that we accredit, we do so for both contact and distance. Okay. Is that the right terminology, Ruan? Okay, good. I think to remind again, you know, as I look back, we've had quite a significant amount of faculty expansion. The law faculty was introduced, education was introduced, and more recently, engineering and health sciences, we've expanded into.
We've seen faculty growth, which provides opportunity for more organic growth within our existing businesses as well. As I've said, we have a comprehensive suite of programs from skills developments right the way through to PhDs, and we provide those in every single mode of distribution. Okay. It really is a comprehensive offering in our tertiary business. What's more is we're constantly building on that offering all of the time. You'll see here we have some 71 programs in the pipeline to add to an impressive 229 full-time qualifications that we already offer. As we expand, as we grow, we offer further qualifications right across the range. There is a fair amount of baked-in growth for our tertiary division with this kind of a program alone. Okay.
I wanted to touch on how we're starting to really utilize the technology in our business to a much greater extent. It has been interesting for me to observe sort of the development of the organization over time, getting structures, processes, systems right, capability. Resources have grown in terms of the capabilities and competence, and it really is quite pleasing for us to see how we're starting to embrace new technologies and actually utilizing that in the delivery of education. More recently, Rosebank College has started to use AI to help in terms of the development of its online or video-supported programs for blended learning operations, and I just wanted to give you an indication as to how this works.
At the forefront of this cutting-edge approach to education, Rosebank College is the first institution in South Africa to utilize generative AI to create video tutorials for students. While other colleges and universities are still grappling with the conceptual ideas of AI, Rosebank is actively implementing them, and in the process, gaining a considerable first-mover advantage. How do we get 800 modules to market? Traditionally, creating video tutorials was a labor-intensive process. Hours of setup, recording, editing, and post-production. Now, enter Synthesia AI. Comparing the traditional recording studio to Synthesia AI, the difference is clear. The future is faster, more efficient, and tailor-made for the digital age.
See, as that was produced using the AI tool, with an avatar. Gosh, I'm really up to speed with all the terminology, aren't I? Okay. I think it's really quite exciting. Look, we are trialing, and we're learning all of the time, but this is really. You can see it would take us up to three weeks to produce a module using a studio environment. With the AI, we can do it in four days. We have, as you've seen, a significant portfolio of products. We have some 800 modules that we're looking. Imagine if each one of those took three to four weeks to develop and the cost you can understand versus using the AI tool and with pretty. I think, you know, we are using a lot of student feedback.
It's quite interesting, and I'm looking at Linda here because I think I'm going to quote correctly. It's interesting to note how there was a white woman with an American accent. Now, we actually surveyed, and this was the feedback from students that that was deemed to be the most appropriate character that they thought was most convincing. Am I right in that? Okay. We're working with students. You know, we're launching modules, getting feedback. But I think it's really quite exciting how the teams are embracing the new technology and utilizing it from productivity gain, and I think enhancing the quality and the expectation experience for the students. It's an exciting development. Okay? In addition to that, gosh, this certainly is a part reminiscing.
I can remember, I think it was back in, geez, Siobhan, 2013 when we actually produced the CapEx, which was approved for our learning management system, and we went with Blackboard, which was state-of-the-art, proprietary software and the most appropriate at that point in time. Ever since then, we've been working on Blackboard. I must say we were early in our journey, and whilst it certainly was innovative. By the way, if we look back at COVID, one of the reasons that we enjoyed so much success and were able to switch 70,000 students online in a matter of three weeks was because of our investment in LMS in the tertiary in the Blackboard tool, and we were able to utilize that to support in the schools division.
Actually, as life goes on and things progress, gosh, that's poignant, isn't it? Certain assets become less relevant. The team have found a more sophisticated, more flexible, and altogether, I think more engaging tool in terms of Brightspace. The decision has been taken to migrate from Blackboard into Brightspace. It's a project that they've really embraced with a lot of enthusiasm. I think there's been phenomenal progress made. That tool, much more flexible, adaptive and will allow us to do so much more, which is in line with our strategy of developing personalized learning plans and utilizing AI and tools to enhance that learning experience. Altogether, the students' experience interaction with Brightspace is far more compelling, more enjoyable and more informative.
At the end of the day, I'm sure the learning experience will be significantly better. We've got a comprehensive plan for rolling that out, and as I say, it's directly linked to our vision of having a personalized learning plan for every single student in the ADvTECH system. Okay. I think that's another exciting development for us. Again, just touching on the opportunities that exist for tertiary. I've already spoken about how we've done the faculty expansion and these sort of professional qualifications. Just to give you some idea over a relatively short space of time, what kind of growth we're experiencing. We've seen a distinct shift, perhaps from what would I call it? The more general type of qualification to more specifics that are likely to lead to good employment opportunities. I think that's quite obvious, quite what you would expect.
Education is expensive, and people are making the best bet on that education that they think will earn them a good career and job prospects in the future. It is pleasing to see this, and of course, we've matched it in terms of our investment into these categories. We do believe, as you've seen from that program extension, that we'll be able to continue to develop in those faculties and maybe even other faculties. I wanna talk today about a couple of areas that those in the business will know I'm quite excited about and quite passionate, but I do think it represents great opportunity for ADvTECH as we look forward. That's quite aside perhaps from this geographic expansion, which of course remains a key objective for us, is to take our brands into Africa.
We do have, I think, one of the most exciting developments. We're looking at opening Rosebank College in Ghana. We had hoped to do it early next year, but I think we're going to push that project out to ensure that we do it correctly. That will be quite exciting as we take the blended learning Rosebank College experience into Ghana, into Accra. We've already identified a location. Stoffel, have we actually concluded the lease agreements or not yet? Not quite yet. Okay. No, we're very close. Good. Okay. But it's an ideal location. So we are quite far down that route, and I'm pretty sure that that will be brought to fruition and will be an exciting development for ADvTECH. If we look at this trend to employ, I want to share a slide with you.
The unemployment stats in South Africa are nothing short of horrendous, and I think you all appreciate and understand that. Okay. It's my understanding and my information may be out of date. I can only imagine that it's probably gone up. My understanding is that we need GDP growth of at least 8% to achieve the labor absorption rate. In other words, that would just take care of those new workers coming into the market. As I said, my information might be slightly out of date, but I doubt it's anything less than that at this point in time. As we've seen, when was the last time we experienced 8% GDP growth? I don't think there are many people who would be prepared to make a bet that we might in the near future.
We're actually staring down almost an insoluble problem. However, if we look at what's happening in terms of around the globe, there are amazing examples. In Egypt, for example, it is the second largest contributor to the Egyptian GDP, the repatriation earned by the diaspora who are working on expatriate conditions, and it amounts to something like $24 billion. Egyptians who have moved out of their own home, moved to other countries and repatriate earnings on that basis. The Philippines is another very good example of a massive diaspora that are returning something like $40 billion to the Philippines as they found gainful employment outside their own country.
It does beg the question as well, if we have an insurmountable problem in the sense of GDP growth in this country, that's never gonna help us to solve the unemployment crisis. Why don't we start looking at this as perhaps an area of opportunity? Why don't we actually start trying to train to employ and skilling people that they may well be able to take those skills and seek employment elsewhere? The benefit to the country will be enormous in terms of the repatriation of funds, and I would bet my bottom dollar that 98% of those people would want to return to South Africa at some point in time, and they will come back to this country with a better level of experience and skills in any event.
I can't understand why, as a nation, we don't try to follow such a strategy. If we look at what that might mean to us. By the way, nursing is a classic example. I'm sure you've probably heard that there's already a raging debate about the shortage of nurses in this country. Okay. On the other hand, most countries from the United States, Europe and Australia experience shortage of nurses. Already, you can see the statistics. 16% of the nurses in the United States are actually migrant who have actually moved there to fulfill these positions, and they see the demand actually continuing to increase. If you look at the National Health Service in the U.K., we know, okay, there was an article in the paper not so recently that they've actually virtually taken up the majority of nursing resources in Ghana.
They certainly travel here to South Africa to recruit experienced nurses to take back to the National Health Service as well. Likewise in EMH. There is demand, and if we skill people, there's an opportunity for them to get gainful employment. One in eight nurses are working in a different country to where they were trained. Okay. This is a practice already, and if we could actually just start to open up the opportunity to train nurses, I think it represents a huge opportunity for ADvTECH. By the way, I'm very pleased to report that brokered by one of our shareholders, the IFC, we are having discussions with large multinationals as well as local corporations, okay, in terms of setting up a healthcare faculty or facility where we could look at training not only nurses but healthcare workers in general. Okay.
We have a long way to go. As I said, this is some of the blue sky, but I think there is an enormous opportunity that if we could get behind, I think it might actually well help society in South Africa to start resolving this problem of unemployment. There's one area. The other area is this whole cruise liner, and I know Renee is sitting here today. She's just frightened me with the number of jobs that she says she now has on the book. We started to explore and investigate through the cruise liner industry, which is amazing if you look at these stats. Okay? $155 billion sector of the economy, 1.2 million jobs, and recovering after the COVID pandemic continues to grow.
Passenger volumes from 2023 are expected to be $35.7 million in 2024. This is great. 14 new ships were brought into service in 2023. Okay? The stat is that for every 24 people who are on a cruise liner, that creates one full-time job. If you say that's gonna go from 31.5 to 30.7, by the way, that's 175,000 new jobs created as a result of a growth in that industry. Now, these are not particularly high-skill jobs. They do require a level of skill, but they're in this area: chef, cook, waiter, bar service, guest off...
Guest service office of food and beverage, which is ideally Capsicum and our hotel school are ideally placed to train, and we have started this initiative to work with the cruise liners and the placement agencies to start to uncover some of this opportunity. As again, I was checking with Renee, the stat is this, there is one cruise liner that has indicated to us that they are looking for 600 people a month. Okay. I think you mentioned to me they have 13,500 jobs that we're looking to source. Okay. Again, this to me is one of the ways which we can actually look to try and solve some of the unemployment problems in South Africa, because our own economy certainly isn't gonna do this. Again, I think ADvTECH is perfectly positioned to take advantage of this kind of a development.
If you look at the salaries that can be earned on the cruise liner versus what those equivalent jobs would earn in South Africa, okay, and take into account that as long as you're outside of the country, that becomes tax-free, and also take into account that you have no living expenses while you're on board the ship, in fact, your meals and accommodation are provided, you can start to see that financially for individuals, this makes great sense. Okay. One of the problems is how do the students who would be interested in these kind of an opportunities get funded? That remains, as we say, demand is not the problem in South Africa. Affordability is the issue. It's a wonderful opportunity for our tertiary division.
We are really sort of just making the first baby steps, but I think it's very exciting when one looks at our division as to what opportunities there may be and what we could realize. Okay. That goes without saying, well, without telling you how busy we've been just in our own home market. We acquired a new building in Pretoria. Just to give you an idea. I'm sorry, my pointer isn't very strong, and in fact, looks like it's over. Maybe if I took my finger off it might help. There you go. That was our building in Pretoria. We bought this building, which we are now busy refurbing. Well, we in fact completed it. Apparently, I'm sorry, this isn't the best.
We've really battled to try and give you a picture that kind of really does justice to the development. We have created a hugely exciting student environment. Linda tells me that our new registrations in 2024 were standing there taking pictures of themselves, posting on social media, immensely proud of the facility that they go to. That is our desire to try and create institutions, learning environments where the students cannot believe what fantastic value they're getting and the kind of environment that they're actually in. I think we have done quite well in differentiating ourselves in that area. This is the development Varsity College in Pretoria.
Very exciting, I'm pleased to report that both Rosebank College in Pretoria, Varsity College in Pretoria, have done exceptionally well in their enrollment cycle, and we attribute some of that success to the new exciting environment that we've been able to create and provide. That is justification for the CapEx, Dilia. Varsity College Waterfall, similarly, and thanks to the property division, they really are able to execute a significant number of projects and develop these, I think, very exciting student environments. We've opened a new Rosebank College in Mbombela. And I think we've had a good enrollment cycle, Linda. Yep. Ahead of our expectations there, so another growth opportunity. There's the inside of that.
As I say, our desire is to try and create these exciting student environments where they can't believe what they're getting for the kind of price that they're paying. Our Rosebank College, Bloemfontein, I think I have shared this issue before, but we did have some questions more recently. This is the campus that we bought, and we've now bought that building. There it is. Our vision is that we will own this entire block, and we will turn it into a student precinct over time. That building there belongs to Wits. It's a Wits residence. We have had some discussions with them about the possibility or opportunity to do a property swap because it's a little out of the way, and as I said, sitting on our site. There's no progress on that yet.
As I say, the vision is for us to have this entire block in Bloemfontein and then develop it as a student precinct. One of the first phases of that is to reskin this building. Now, that's the existing building, and this is the architect's rendition, and we'll be starting that project mid this year. Okay. The CapEx still has to be signed. The costings and the groundwork is being done. Just to give you an idea, this is the sort of environment that we wanna try and create. I think any student of Rosebank College would really enjoy and revel in that kind of environment and how proud you might be of your institution if that's what we are able to deliver, which is our goal.
Very exciting developments from the tertiary division. All of that, an increased margin. Fantastic business and well done to the tertiary teams. Okay. If we move on to our schools business now and, across the board, a really good performance. Our portfolio of brands is really delivering, and I can't speak highly enough of how the structure, the management teams are focused, understand what the key drivers of their business are, the metrics. I was reflecting with Delia, the management meetings that we attend now, the presentations are exceptional, where each of the operating functional heads of the brand management team truly understand what drives their business and are on top of the information. All of that, it gives me great confidence that we're gonna continue to enjoy success in the schools division.
It's a comprehensive portfolio. I think it's very well-positioned. We are really able to optimize the markets by having these kind of brands clearly focused at specific segments. Again, underpinning our growth by the schools division, operating profit up 21%. The margin moving in the right direction in South Africa, continuing the trend. As I say, I'd love to see that margin a bit higher, Mike, Maurice, Christo, but it's getting there. It's the right direction. Schools, rest of Africa. Yeah, I think what we need to do is to set up a little bit of internal competition between South Africa and the rest of Africa on that margin. Okay. Then again, just to share with you the slide, I know there is always a question around what about financial hardship?
What about immigration, and how is that affecting your business? Yes, this shows the impact, both immigration and financial levers are up versus the prior period, and yet we have still reported positive growth. Okay. Again, another key feature or another way to look at this is that I think it. This started in the COVID year, where the tradition in our business was that we would start the year with a certain number. We would see some degree of erosion. We would end the year with a lower number. In COVID year, that turned around, and in fact, we had more students in our system at the end of the year than we did at the start of the year.
We attributed that to the quality of our online offering and the fact that the organization was able to respond with speed in terms of putting online education and the kind of pastoral support and program quality that we put behind it. What we've been delighted with is that the trend of ending the year at, around or even sometimes slightly above what we start the year has continued. If you look at our numbers, in 2022, we started in February 36,802, and in fact, we ended the year with some 370 more students than we had at the beginning of the year. In 2023, our numbers from the start to the end have only declined by 50. Yes, we are seeing leavers through financial. We are seeing leavers in immigration.
The brands and their value proposition and the team's effort at providing quality education in a value equation that's meaningful, I think is really holding up in the market extremely well. This is very positive. When we start the new year on 41,000, 2024's figures, our overall volume growth is at 4.4%. Okay. I think it's a really good indication of the health of the brands and their focus in terms of delivering in the market proposition. I said I would spend some time on rest of Africa, because if there is a question around our volume growth, then it must be, well, we talk in glowing terms about the growth opportunities in Africa, and certainly in the past we've had double digit. We'd like to see that continuing, Jaco.
This year we're at 4%, but there are some very good reasons for that, okay? Firstly, we'll explain, we closed one school in the west of Kenya and in Kisumu. Secondly, we've made a strategic switch into the Cambridge curricula in Nairobi, Makini. Finally, the Gaborone International School. That has been a phenomenal success and is now pretty much at capacity. In fact, it is at capacity, I guess. Therefore, the impact that that's had in our numbers growth over the past few years is now negated to some extent. Just explaining a bit more, as I said to you, Kisumu is in the west of the country. There's Nairobi. It's on the shores of Lake Victoria.
What we actually had was a three or four sites within Kisumu itself, one of which was in Kibos, which was a boarding school. Now, the roads to Kibos were notorious, something like those in Sandton. Couldn't resist. Sorry. It's difficult to get to. The boarding facilities, to tell you the truth, were probably not what we would want, and the investment required for us to put it up to the standard that would be acceptable from an ADvTECH perspective wasn't warranted in terms of the size of the site. We've made a decision to close that boarding school down and consolidate into Kisumu itself onto the sites we've got, and we'll increase at those sites. However, we have lost those students that wanted, and it is a preferred option amongst some of the population in Kenya.
They want a boarding school environment. It's very important for them to send their children to a boarding school. Obviously those people have looked for alternatives, and that had a negative impact on our numbers in Kenya. In terms of the success of the Cambridge curricula, I think we described to you that during the COVID pandemic, we were not able to provide the local Kenyan qualification online. What we did as a substitute and to try and ensure that the children weren't kinda lost in their academic career, we supplemented with Cambridge, which we could support and we could provide online.
Well, what's happened in Kenya is that there's been quite a shift, where the Cambridge option is now the preferred option as opposed to the local curricula, which has now moved towards an outcomes-based kind of criteria, and some of the parents are a little suspicious about what that might mean. Whereas the Cambridge system, of course, is internationally recognized and guarantees you access into an international university and certainly into a local university, so why not do the Cambridge system? We've seen that shift in terms of what the market's looking for. In order to be able to accommodate the growth in the Cambridge, we've had to close the old high school that was the Cambridge curricula, the Kenya curricula, and that has had a negative effect on some of the numbers in this year.
What it does mean is that the Cambridge curricula is an opportunity for even enhanced revenue per student and an improvement on that margin. Hey, Jaco. Correct. That was easy. However, just to give assurance, we do still see significant opportunity for growth, and we say this is an aberration, and we'll be back on that kind of, I would hope, if not double-digit then very close to double-digit growth in our Africa business. We have approved already CapExes to increase expansion at Makini, which is, as I say, so that'll amount to another 8% and 4%. We are currently investigating other opportunities, which I cannot share any more detail at this stage. That would represent quite a significant jump in our Africa business too.
Nothing is finalized or approved, but the team are busy working on those. Again, we have confidence in terms of our Africa business looking forward, and with an additional 10%. We're actually saying that just increasing the capacity, there's 11% additional capacity at the moment, which is guaranteed if you like. There are some exciting plans that we hope the management team will deliver. Okay. There you are. Jaco, I'm creating a rod for your back. I just wanted to talk now about academic excellence and our commitment within the business to academic excellence.
You know, we've been on this journey for a while now, but we are now really starting to be able to show the clear empirical evidence of our focus on academic excellence and what it's doing in terms of our competitive advantage of, in our business. Starting with our Junior Colleges, which is one of our unsung brands. It does a phenomenal job. I've never seen such a dedicated management team. They are amazingly enthusiastic and deliver so much with so little, but it's wonderful. What we started to do was to work on the importance of early childhood development in the academic career of a child is absolutely critical and starting to be understood more and more.
With the Junior Colleges initiatives, what we've been able to do now with their kind of programs and the academic support that they put into place, now we can use the MAP system, okay, which is the academic performance assessment system, international benchmark. I'm gonna show you some stats a little bit further on of what we're using and how it's driving decision-making in our business. We're now able to assess the performance of these students when they now move into the ADvTECH system. We have empirical evidence that says the students that come through Junior Colleges when they actually move into our ADvTECH schools are at a 15% advantage in terms of their performance in math, 13% in terms of English, and 88% of them have a higher reading capacity than the average that move in.
Here is empirical evidence for parents as to why they should be sending their children to a Junior Colleges. I think it's a powerful argument and something that we now need to build into the communication. I know that's something that Geoff will certainly be paying specific attention to in assisting the businesses in how we actually communicate this message more powerfully going forward. It's a wonderful example of the real value that we add. Okay. Likewise in Evolve. I think when we launched Evolve, we explained that this is a different school, okay? The whole concept of Evolve is based around the mastery of skills, not on chronological age. What happens is that it's an MIT-developed system.
What happens is that the child, in order to progress, has to demonstrate that they've mastered that concept, then they move on to another. If they don't, they reinforce, okay? Therefore, the limit and the potential of the child is not hindered by the chronological sort of grade one, grade two, grade three performance, but how well they're doing academically in a sense. This is our first IEB exams in the online space, and you can see how well we have performed. This is our pass rate at 93% and our bachelor pass rate for an online school at 77%. The IEB average for online school is 89%. We're at 93%. Bachelor pass rate 65%. Our pass rate 77%. On the national curricula at cycle ones, those averages are lower, and so we obviously exceed it.
If you look at some of the other competitors in the online space, if you look at the UCT offering, 70% pass rate versus our 93% and only a 29% bachelor degree pass rate versus our 77%. Brainline, we could not get information on their bachelor degree pass rate. But we beat them on overall pass rate and even Impaq. Again, we couldn't get their overall pass rate, but we beat them on their bachelor pass rate. I think here again, strong empirical evidence that the Evolve offering is significantly different and does offer an advantage to those who enrolled. I'm pleased to see not only that, but their retention rate for an online school is around 83%. Am I right, Chris? Yeah. Which we believe it's hard for us to get an industry standard, but we believe that's exceptional.
You can imagine to leave a school, the decision to leave a school, a normal brick-and-mortar school is quite difficult. You have friends. It's probably, you know, your chosen option. You're on your route. It's convenient. If you decide to leave a brick-and-mortar school, it's quite a tough decision. Not so much with an online. You can move in and out of online quite easily. To have an 83% retention rate, we think is an exceptional performance. Evolve is starting to deliver in the areas where we expect it to. Another example of the commitment to academic excellence. I've spoken in the past about our ADvLEARN, our investment in AI and the software, and we're working specifically with the development team to make a unique tool for the ADvTECH system and how we're embedding that into our program.
I probably won't be able to do justice to what this has the potential, what it's doing currently to our business and what the potential is. I have spoken to Geoff about the possibility of setting up a specific investors day to actually do a deep analysis of what we're doing in this area of AI and the personalized development plan for people to better understand it, because this probably isn't the forum to try and cover it. Suffice to say that this is where homework is set on this tool. The children do the homework. It uses the AI technology to then, again, if they show mastery, move them to a higher concept, and if they don't, to repeat that kind of learning information.
Where we're seeing great value out of this tool is that the information is available to the teacher on a dashboard immediately as to which children progressed where, what, and which concepts were found difficult. The teacher can now redirect their learning and be much more efficient in helping the children to progress. That's not all. We get a dashboard, okay, of which of the teachers right across the ADvTECH system are the most successful at delivering those concepts and getting the best results, and which teachers may well be struggling. We're then able to direct the attention of the central academic team to correct that problem. The power is in the data and in the information that we're actually gathering and assembling as a business. Of course, that has a cumulative effect. I mentioned the MAP, Measures of Academic Progress.
This is an international benchmarking system. Des, remind me how many globally? Is it 14 million, did you say?
ZAR 11 million.
11 million. I added a few. Okay. ZAR 11 million is the database across 150 countries. We're able to measure international norms. What we've been doing now for three years, okay, is testing in these various subjects, and we're now building up, as you can imagine, the information base that allows us. The first observation that we have is the progress. We started this process when this cohort were in grade zero. We measured them, okay. We then measured again in grade one, and we measured in grade two. We're now able to demonstrate the kind of progress that we make. Of course, we benchmark this against them. Likewise, why this starts at three is because we measured this cohort at grade three, and now we've got their grade four and grade five results, and likewise. This is powerful information.
Firstly, we're able to assess, are we making progress in terms of the potential and the learning of these children? We can benchmark it against the international standards. Again, as I say, we're building up this database of information that will help us enormously. I don't think there's any other schools group or basically any other educational business that has the power to utilize the technology in this manner. I do think it's gonna bring a clear competitive advantage to ADvTECH in the future. Here are some of the results again. If you look at our matric pass rate at 99.7% versus 98.5%. I must say this excludes, by the way, the Abbotts College. This was Abbotts College's first year of the Schiller degree pass rate at 93% versus the IEB average at 88.6%. Okay.
Now, correct me, I'm gonna just put you on the spot again, Des. We tried to compute what percentage of the total IEB are ADvTECH students. Can you remember what that was? I don't wanna misclaim. Oh, okay. I thought we were higher.
ADvTECH.
ADvTECH as a... Yeah. Total... Sorry? I think it was 20%. It was above 20%. Yeah. Obviously, as we get bigger, we're gonna tend to the average. It's gonna be harder to be... The issue is that although we're quite a significant component, and I think it's somewhere in the order of 25%, I was gonna say 30%. Anyway, it is quite significant. As we grow in scale, it will be harder and harder for us to beat the average. The truth is we're delivering really good performances. Our Cambridge International results also are phenomenal. Okay. All of the students at Crawford International who wrote the A-level Cambridge exam were accepted into international universities. Okay? Again, hot off the press, this arrived just yesterday from Crawford. It was voted the best academic school in Kenya.
You can see how this focus on academic excellence is central to the thrust and I believe contributing significantly to our reputation and as a result, enrollment growth. Okay. I think we're only starting to scratch the surface in terms of how we're building significant advantage in our focus on academics. Okay. Just back to some of these capacity stats. You can see at 83% operating leverage. We've come from 79%, 82%. Obviously, a new school in Raslouw was on board, but we're only at 68% of ultimate capacity, so plenty of headroom, opportunity to still enjoy that operating leverage as numbers fill. Not least of all, we have more opportunities. New schools, Morningside and New Bridge. You know, we piloted the Bridge in Beverley.
This has opened very successfully, exceeded our numbers and expectations already. A really exciting environment, and it's a lovely-looking school. Looking forward to the success there. Raslouw has been phenomenal. You know, we were very proud of Glen Vista, but I think you've outstripped Glen Vista. Mike, have you not? Christo? Okay. We developed phase 1, and I think Stoffel just had to leave the construction crew on to do phase 2 immediately thereafter. That's how successful the enrollment has been. A phenomenal success. This school has, again, I think now established a new record. No J curve, hey, Mike? There you go. Look at that. Okay. Pinnacle College Ridgeview, exciting new development happened. We have Charterhouse, which is only a pre-primary and a prep school, and therefore quite limited in a sense of what it could offer.
We've managed to acquire a sizable piece of land next door, and we will be building a high school and repositioning this as Pinnacle College Ridgeview. I said to Stoffel, "Boy, if the building ends up anything like the architect's renditions, I'm quite sure that that's gonna beat Raslouw," isn't it, Christo?
It is.
There you go. You see. Another new project. Okay. Moving on to resourcing. As we say, somebody quoted back to me yesterday, it's a tale of two cities. Okay. Our South African business has my unending admiration. You can imagine what it's like trying to run a resourcing business in the South African economy, which is performing the way it is and where the employment crisis is, where it is as well. They have an incredibly tough time. I think they have done an outstanding job despite the fact that perhaps the financial results don't do them justice at this point in time. We are very appreciative of what a tough environment they're actually operating in.
On the other hand, the senior team at resourcing are to be congratulated on brilliant execution of the strategy to go and look for other geographies and other markets, 'cause that has certainly paid handsome dividends for us. Okay. Overall, the resourcing division, a really respectable set of results. Of course, in terms of South Africa, the picture is somewhat different. We do have to point out that we did sell contract accounting, and you can see the contribution that contract accounting had in the past. What they've managed to do is kinda hold their own in terms of revenue. The loss of the operating profit from the sale of that business also impacted them. To still nevertheless produce that result in this environment, we are appreciative of the effort that, Lynn, you and your team make. Okay.
The rest of Africa, a fabulous story. 26% revenue growth, 28% operating growth. It's been a wonderful journey, and we expect that will continue in the future. Overall resourcing, delivering a good result. Really strong balance sheet. I think probably the most important factor is that we did acknowledge and admit that we scored somewhat of an own goal last year with the new information system in our tertiary business, and the billing cycle at the beginning of the year was immensely difficult for us. That meant that we were on the back foot when it came to the collecting of the debtors, and that was the one fly in the ointment of last year's results.
I'm pleased to report to you that we have significantly corrected and fetched back that position during the course of this year as we undertook to do. If you look at the tertiary total receivables, they hardly changed at all despite the fact that we've had that revenue and student growth. Okay? The picture is altogether significantly better. Just to give you an idea, the receivables, the collections and the loss allowance. We probably have around about ZAR 3.5 million left to collect, which is really quite insignificant. I think we can say that we've retrieved that position quite effectively. In terms of our cash flow, strong feature of the business, something which we flag all of the time. Another great performance in this area.
Of course, what that's allowed us to do is to continue to reduce borrowings to the extent now. We're obviously looking at our balance sheet structure in terms of trying to ensure that we have the right returns. That, of course, has led to the fact that we can increase the dividend, which is one of the key features. ROIC, a significant turn, trending in the right direction now up to 20.7%, despite and a significant investment plan. We're now at that stage where the business is generating more than enough cash to cover its investment plans and still enhance the returns. Our CapEx expenditure of ZAR 669 odd million, adding mostly to existing sites, which is of course the most efficient CapEx that we have.
There were a couple of new schools in terms of Morningside in particular, and then Kyalami and Raslouw. Not new, but a new site in terms of Raslouw, but the Morningside one. Of course, furniture, fixtures and fittings. We continue to invest in systems as well. That's the breakdown of CapEx expenditure. Our strategy, our one-page strategy document, I'm quite certain that Geoff will wanna look at this in terms of his view and his perspective to see what he believes is relevant and whether that's still the appropriate way for us to do it. It has served a good purpose for us, I think, in terms of keeping focus on things.
Something else that a lot of work has gone into, you know, we are obviously, I think a really good ESG investment, okay? Particularly the social impact. Our footprint is relatively light. I'm very comfortable the governance structures of ADvTECH are sound, but it's the area of social impact where we can probably, you know, contribute the most, as an organizer, as an educational organization. We really are putting a lot of effort into this in terms of our own business goals, visions, and objectives that we're setting ourselves, and also in terms of improving our reporting requirements in this area. I think good developments there too. I think ADvTECH represents an outstanding investment opportunity.
You know, we have underlying demand, driven perhaps by somewhat negative factors here in South Africa, but certainly driven by positive factors in the rest of the continent. We have a real quality asset base. I think we've demonstrated that. Well-positioned brands, well-structured. We generate significant levels of cash, which we're now at the point where we're more than able to meet our investment plans for the going forward. We've demonstrated our business. It's robust, it's agile, it's flexible. We've met challenges on this journey and responded incredibly well. We're emphasizing and highlighting the fact that from an ESG perspective, we're an outstanding quality asset as well. A good argument as to why ADvTECH is a fabulous place to invest.
The dividend, as I've mentioned, I think and I hope has surprised all, in a sense, is that the board now have evaluated the position, and as I say, our strong cash earnings, the fact that we've reduced our borrowing substantially. We've been looking at the structure of our balance sheet and how we can optimize those returns. It seems appropriate that we should be able to return back more cash to the investors at this point in time. That's up 57% for the final dividend, ZAR 0.87, which is a 45% increase. Okay. That continues the trend that we've experienced of increasing dividends over the last few years. Okay. I think a positive note on which to finish. Okay. Now we'll take any questions that people might have.
Okay. Just before we have questions, we actually have another slide.
Oh, God.
Okay. As you all know,
That's it.
Roy's final presentation and his final set of results. We decided we'd do a public performance appraisal. Seeing that Roy likes benchmarking, we said, "Well, we've got to, you know, benchmark him." You know, I had to think who could we benchmark him against? Why not the highest position in the land, Cyril Ramaphosa? I think let's start with the commonality. They both like rattling on. I mean, Roy is about 20 minutes over time. That's where it ends. I mean, Cyril, aloof, can't make a decision, needs to consult. When he sets targets, nobody can understand them. When you measure against them, you understand them even less. Roy, on the other hand, sort of very focused.
I think his particular strengths is identifying the problems, simplifying them, and then determining what success is and then measuring against that success. I think that sort of sets him apart. If we just click on and sort of talk about how Roy simplifies things. If you listen to today's presentation, pretty much that's all he spoke about. He needed 90 slides to do it. I can do it in a column. I think, yeah, I think in all of his presentations, I think 90% of what he said would hit one of those topics. I mean, quality education, it's a core of our business, and it's what, you know, that's what our customers expect of us.
To leverage technology, I think Roy is always talks about having a competitive advantage in this area, and I think he spoke a lot about that today. The value propositions, I mean, in the business, they're so sick of this. If you're not growing, people are not buying your value proposition. If you're not growing faster than your competitor, well, they might like yours, but they like your competitor's even more. You know, he's spoken about the effectiveness and the efficiencies. I think you've seen some of that coming through, and he's spoken previously about turning the structure inside out. You know, what was centralized is has now been decentralized and vice versa. The shared services and, you know, some of the things we're doing on the properties and that.
It's as we access more information, we can make more changes. You know, the drive into Africa under his leadership as well. That's pretty much, you know, how I say that laser focus that he has. This is pretty much what he's done with a few little nuances here and there besides this. We then said, "Well, how does that translate?" We sort of put up some graphs to sort of measure the success. We first did Cyril's, but they were all flat, so I didn't wanna show them to you. Here's Roy's. Under his leadership, ADvTECH has increased student numbers by 73%, revenue by 292%, and then jobs created.
Cyril's promised about 1 million more than Roy has delivered, but he's actually delivered 3,000 less than Roy has. I think again, you can see the efficiency. You know, 73 on the student enrollments, 55 on the jobs. Three thousand more people employed, but we are doing it effectively. Had we left it to Cyril, they'd all be in government positions and not adding any value. HEPS more than trebled in that 8-year period. Share price, it's moved up nicely, but I think the shareholders are still being a bit tough on Roy. Not quite as much as the HEPS. If you add the dividends on, it's a little bit better at 241% and with today's share price, probably closer to 250%.
Roy, I think you can be very proud of what you've achieved with this group. I'm sure all the shareholders and stakeholders are very appreciative of what you've done. We wish you well in your retirement. Although we do think that it's a bit, you're a bit young to retire. We are expecting to see your name on the ballot paper. Because I think two terms of being the president, if you could do this with ADvTECH, imagine what you could do with the country. At the end of your two terms, you'll still be younger than those clowns in America. Roy, we wish you all the best.
Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Well, thanks very much. We better get to those questions. Thanks, Didier.
It looks like you gave all the answers today. There's only two questions at this stage. The first one is: What are the key drivers of the high operating margins in Schools' Rest of Africa business, and can this be replicated in Schools SA?
I think, there are different cost bases in the rest of Africa. I mean, we've found that we can find some wonderful teaching staff. We're really excited about access to the talent that we have in those markets. Again, I think it adds strength to ADvTECH because, of course, we've now tapped into yet another sort of resource of really high caliber teachers. Quite honestly, the cost structures of those organizations is substantially different to that which we expect in South Africa. I don't believe we will be able to. We've always said, actually, investing in Africa, there are risks for us.
There are specific market risks that we need to be cautious and careful of, and it's one of the reasons why we try to be very considered before we make an investment. We do expect those returns to be higher as a result of those risks. I don't think it would be fair to compare the two businesses. We think that, as we said, the guidance we've given is 25% for the South African Schools businesses. You need to get there. We're very pleased with the progress that we've made towards in the Africa business, and I think that's in line with our expectation in terms of when we made the investment decision. Primarily the cost base, how we've been able to accelerate there, I think is all the work that the management teams have done.
Some really good work at looking at the efficiencies, the structure of those businesses, changing kind of the traditional thought of what a school had to have versus what we believe is necessary. Again, I think just good evidence of what the ADvTECH system can deliver, when it focuses on bringing improvement into the operating model.
The next question, what impact these property acquisitions and developments have on the margins and free cash flows, and, you know, what's the management thinking? I mean, I think the issue is that they already in the numbers. You know, the majority of those CapExes that you saw were developments that happened last year, and the balance are developments that are gonna happen in the current year. It's actually part of our ongoing CapEx program that we've been doing year after year. We've been adding sites, adding capacity, refurbishing buildings, and this is, you know, no different. It's already absorbed in our cash flow. It's already in our margins, and we do not anticipate that you will see any material movement in either of those two metrics going forward. I think that is it.
I think we've answered all the questions, so.
Any questions in the room? Yeah. Do you need a microphone? Here, quickly. Yeah.
Thank you so much. Well done. Great results. Just quickly on the policy draft for the recognition of higher education, higher educational institutes, what's the progress there on the policy?
You're referring to our desire to, for university status?
Yes. Yes.
Yeah. Okay. Well, unfortunately, the initial set of draft regulations were provided. We have responded in terms of our comments, as have other players in the sector and that has now been with the department for quite some time. They were supposed to have produced a revised set of recommendations that hasn't materialized. We are in touch with them. What we're doing, our strategy is to continue to ensure that our organization meets what we believe would be any reasonable set of criteria to be termed a university. We're well on that road on that progress. There are very clear goals and objectives that we've set in terms of what we want to achieve, and we believe that would allow us to be called a university by any sort of, as I say, reasonable measure.
For us, we're obviously watching the process on the department. We continue to engage to try and find out when they may be produced. We're gonna continue on that journey and prepare ourselves so that when we are ready, we believe we will have the right to call ourselves a university. Okay.
One more question.
Yeah.
Sorry. What is a normal credit loss ratio for tertiary margins? Excluding credit losses seem to have declined quite a bit. I think that the current sort of ratio is probably about the appropriate ratio. I think if you look at the comparative to the last year, I don't think it's quite an accurate assessment because I think the reference is that the amount of credit losses here, if you look on the slide, was about ZAR 90 million prior than the previous year. If you work that back, it indicates that the majority of the improvement in profit came through from that. I think with the system problems that we had last year, we were late in recognizing what.
We would normally have deregistrations where a student doesn't engage, you know, with the institution even if they have actually signed the contract, and made maybe some small payments. It was probably in the revenue last year. It was in the revenue in 2022, and then required a bad debt. It would actually be a deregistration at an earlier point in the year and then not be in the revenue. I think that a like-for-like comparison of the benefit of the credit losses is, we estimated it's about ZAR 40 million lower this year than last year, if you adjust for that.
In other words, about ZAR 70 million-ZAR 80 million of the uplift in profit is because of you know, real business factors and efficiencies and leverage and sort of what Roy alluded to is maybe a little bit excessive margins this year would be that clawback through the good collections of the prior year debt. I hope that answers that question. Okay. When you consider utilization rates in secondary schools, if we exclude the new school, would this be up year on year? Yes. I think we added about just over 3,000 seats, I think, in the CapEx program during 2023 that becomes available in 2024. The student enrollment numbers grew at just marginally below that. I think the...
It was 6%-7% increase in capacity, and it's 5% in student numbers. We will grow into that capacity. I mean, when you build, you've got to build sort of modular. You know, you'll do a whole block of classrooms, even if you only expect to use half of them in the next year. That provides you growth for the future years. It's just a minor timing issue in terms of the phasing of our CapEx, and it'll sort itself out during the next 18 months. Okay. What is your medium-term utilization sustainable rate in South Africa? Again, I guess it depends on how many schools we build. I think you've seen that we've moved from 79% - 84%, dropping marginally to 83%.
I think in the longer run, I would expect it would probably continue to move up slightly. I don't think it'll ever get above 90%, because if it gets above 90%, it means we're not adding new capacity, which means that growth will slow down. You've always got to be you know, ideally we wanna be moving quite close to 90%, you know, the high 80s%, but not above that. Otherwise, you know, we'll have great utilization, great operating margins, but the growth will slow down. I just wanna make sure I didn't miss anything. Last refresh. That seems to be it.
Great. Okay. Well then, it would be amiss of me not to thank the entire ADvTECH team. It's been a wonderful journey. Everybody except Didier, of course, for that last slide. It has been so much fun. I wish you all the best. Geoff, I know you've got a great team here, and I'm really looking forward to the contribution that your experience base brings. I think that will be a wonderful addition to ADvTECH, and I'm quite certain that you'll continue to have a lot of fun. Thanks to everybody. I really do appreciate it. It's been wonderful. Okay. Thanks, everybody.