The weight is finally off as the cohort that entered the schooling system in 2014 finally makes it to the finish line. The more than 700,000 pupils who wrote the National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations last year received their results this week.
This class was likened to a Baobab tree for their tough spirit through the Covid-19 pandemic, experiencing learning hiccups while juggling sanitation, electricity supply cuts and other social ills.
Notably, more than 66% of bachelor passes were achieved by pupils from no-fee-paying schools.
On Monday, basic education minister Siviwe Gwarube said many learners pursued this milestone amid poverty and hunger, unsafe environments, long travel, language barriers, overcrowded classrooms and uneven resources.
“Every year, in no-fee schools across South Africa, children carrying heavy burdens still walk into classrooms and choose to pursue excellence. They study by candlelight. They share textbooks. They travel far. They keep going,” said Gwarube.
Dr Mugwena Maluleke, general secretary of teacher union Sadtu, said while they welcome the steady improvement of no-fee-paying schools, such sacrifice should not be normalised.
“We urge government to provide adequate resources, proper infrastructure and sufficient numbers of teachers, particularly in the foundation phase, to ensure learners are better prepared as they progress through the schooling system.
“We further call for increased support for learners from no-fee-paying schools. Many of these learners depend on social grants, which are withdrawn when they turn 18 often during their matric year. We believe this has contributed to the decline in the pass rate of grant-beneficiary learners, from 86% in 2024 to 78% in 2025,” said Maluleke.
The 2025 matric results illustrate a number of flashing red lights which must be brought to the fore. Roughly half of learners who began grade one in 2014 did not matriculate last year.
Gwarube announced that while more social grant beneficiaries wrote the NSC exams in 2025, 78% of these candidates passed, down from 86% previously.
“That drop, despite more learners writing, is a warning that must be understood and addressed. Candidates with social grants performed better than candidates whose social grants had become inactive after reaching 18 years, highlighting the importance of social protection to learner performance,” she said.
Maluleke called for the extension of social grants until learners complete their secondary education.
Roger Solomons, Build One South Africa (Bosa) spokesperson, raised concern about the sharp drop-off recorded between grade 10 and matric.
“The 2025 matric results illustrate a number of flashing red lights which must be brought to the fore. Roughly half of learners who began grade one in 2014 did not matriculate last year.
“This is an indictment on both the education system and its supporting structures,” said Solomons.
Mweli Mathanzima, director-general of the department of basic education, said this group was subjected to increased workload to make up for the time lost during the pandemic. This recovery plan was to ensure they were fit to write the final exams.
Though a slight increase from 2024’s pass rate of 87.26%, 2025’s 88% was lauded as the highest in the new dispensation’s education system.
Gwarube raised concerns about the poor resourcing of South African sign language, saying it is not yet widely accessible for learning and teaching.
“We have too few trained specialists to teach gateway subjects through sign language. This requires careful attention. In a country committed to dignity, inclusion cannot stop at writing an exam paper. It must extend to access to the full curriculum, including gateway subjects,” she said.
She raised alarm that only 34% of candidates wrote mathematics as most of them only take it up in grade 10 but drop it as a subject along the way.
“This is concerning as this is a gateway subject. While the national percentage of what we will call bachelor passes decreased slightly from around 48% to 46%, more candidates than ever before achieved bachelor passes, increasing by 8,700 to over 345,000 learners,” she said.
Listing the performances of the provinces, she said: “In ninth place is the Eastern Cape ... a pass rate of 84.17%, in eighth place is Limpopo with 86.15% and seventh is Mpumalanga with 86.55%.
“In sixth place is the Northern Cape, having achieved a pass rate of 87.79%, marking the biggest improvement of all the provinces. In fifth place is the Western Cape with 88.2%. In fourth place is the North West having achieved 88.49%. In third place is Gauteng with 89.06%, in second place the Free State having achieved 89.33%.
We will not accept schools performing below 70%. We will not accept teachers in key subjects not meeting the standard. We will accelerate the school of specialisation programme.
— Matome Chiloane, Gauteng basic education MEC
“And the best-performing province is KwaZulu-Natal with a pass rate of 90.6%,” Gwarube said.
Fundile David Gade, MEC for education in the Eastern Cape, justified being the worst-achieving province by saying the unique challenges faced by his department, including the June floods, cannot be ignored.
“Overall, 413 schools were affected [by floods] and 48,341 learners in the midst. The biggest impact was in the OR Tambo District with 156 schools and 14,857 learners grossly affected by the floods.
“The sporadic cases of taxi strikes, the allegations of ill-discipline against some educators and principals and the general financial constraints experienced by the education sector, which also put brakes on the intensification of the support programmes we would have wished to implement,” said Gade.
Meanwhile Gauteng, which used to enjoy second position, fell to third, due to KwaZulu-Natal’s jump.
Gauteng basic education MEC Matome Chiloane congratulated the matrics of 2025 for achieving an 89.06% pass rate but expressed concern about the decline in mathematics passes, down six percentage points.
The MEC emphasised that the department would ensure the teaching systems were evaluated and management and teaching barriers speedily addressed.
“We will not accept schools performing below 70%. We will not accept teachers in key subjects not meeting the standard. We will accelerate the school of specialisation programme.”
For the first time, all 75 school districts have achieved a pass rate of 80% and above. District performance is one of the clearest quality indicators, because it shows whether improvement is spreading system-wide or remaining concentrated in pockets of strength, said Gwarube.
The national education system comprises 13-million pupils, 465,000 educators across provinces and 25,000 schools.
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