KwaZulu-Natal’s rise to the top of the national matric rankings may be cause for celebration, but teacher unions have warned the results risk masking deep systemic weaknesses of exhausted teachers, underfunded schools and fragile foundations, threatening future performance.
The province achieved a matric pass rate of 90.6%, taking the top spot in 2025 after several years of steady improvement.
This followed a turning point in 2023, when KZN was named the most improved province after climbing to second place with an 86.4% pass rate. The upward trajectory continued in 2024 with 89.5%, before the province overtook the Free State and Gauteng this year.
Education unions, however, cautioned against reading too much into provincial rankings.
They say urban provinces such as Gauteng and the Western Cape often experience greater fluctuations due to learner migration and constantly shifting school cohorts, making year-on-year comparisons an unreliable measure of education quality.
The National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa), the country’s second-largest teachers’ union, said a drop of one or two positions should not be treated as a crisis, particularly where pass rates and quality indicators have improved. Instead, it warned that the focus on league tables distracts from the real pressures facing schools.
Naptosa executive director Basil Manuel said the latest matric gains, particularly in KZN, were achieved largely through extraordinary teacher sacrifice rather than effective provincial administration.
“The system is being held together by teachers who are at school every day, every weekend and every afternoon,” Manuel said.
“But this is not sustainable. You cannot continue driving teachers this way without something going seriously wrong – burnout, breakdowns, and early exits from the profession are inevitable.”
He said this was achieved by KZN schools despite the near collapse of the provincial education department, citing governance failures, poor planning, and the non-payment of between 46% and 48% of last year’s norms and standards funding.
According to Manuel, matric performance cannot be reduced to a handful of interventions.
Instead, he identified three decisive factors: teachers going far beyond their formal duties, parents fully buying into the importance of matric, and learners recognising the qualification as a critical rite of passage into adulthood.
While districts were widely praised after most achieved pass rates above 80%, Manuel questioned whether this reflected genuine support or simply pressure being pushed onto schools.
“If schools perform well, districts look good. That does not necessarily mean districts are intervening positively,” he said, adding that senior officials and politicians should not be “dancing around as though they made a significant contribution”.
Manuel warned that the intense focus on protecting matric classes had come at the expense of lower grades, where overcrowding, underfunding and weak foundations threaten long-term sustainability.
“You can rob the higher grades for a time, but if you rob the lower grades, the system eventually collapses,” he said.
“The bottom must change, and that is where investment is lacking.”
The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) echoed these concerns, but framed KZN’s performance as the result of long-term ideological and organisational investment rather than short-term fixes.
Sadtu general secretary Mugwena Maluleke said a consistent message had been driven through principals and school improvement plans: that educators must psychologically defy poor conditions and liberate learners’ minds from the limitations imposed by poverty and under-resourcing.
He said Sadtu’s annual teacher awards recognising schools achieving pass rates above 90% had played a key motivational role, “turbo-charging” educators’ commitment and encouraging them to work weekends, holidays and afternoons despite limited resources. However, he warned that this level of sacrifice was increasingly being taken for granted.
KZN education department spokesperson Muzi Mahlambi welcomed the results, saying the province’s success was driven by a sustained academic improvement plan that was reviewed and refined annually.
“Our excitement comes as no surprise because we have always said we are rolling out an academic improvement plan,” Mahlambi said. “Each year we scrutinise the results, assess what worked and what did not, and then consolidate. We had intervention programmes throughout the year – in March, June and September – including morning and afternoon classes.”
But Maluleke cautioned that KZN remains largely rural, with poor facilities and inconsistent payment of norms and standards funding.
“Teachers are supporting learners more and more, but if this commitment continues to be exploited while provincial treasuries impose austerity, these gains will be reversed,” he said.
Sadtu criticised national austerity measures, saying cuts had eliminated support for foundation-phase literacy and numeracy programmes and learner camps, leaving teachers as “the last line of defence” in the system.
Basic education minister Siviwe Gwarube believes part of the reason KZN excelled could be attributed to critical mass.
“I think part of the reason provinces like KZN did well is that it has over 2-million learners out of 13.5-million. It’s got the largest number of learners. And it’s got the largest number of quintiles 1 to 3, so that’s your critical mass.
“I think that the district directors in KZN really worked hard in those rural districts Districts like uMkhanyakude, Umlazi, Ugu – they were all in the top 10 districts. When you’ve got those kind of numbers and you have really dedicated district directors, it’s a story of triumph because obviously the province is in dire financial straits.”
She said KZN did well to support their poorer schools.
“We are talking about the no-fee paying schools, where your children are poor coming from poor communities. What they did was they supported those poor learners ... that’s where their big numbers come from.”
She said she wanted to visit uMkhanyakude: “I’ve heard it’s the most rural district which I intend to go visit for two days so I can learn what it is that they’re doing well to pass.
“Because they are clearly supporting those children from no-fee schools who are recipients of the child-support grants – yet 66% of bachelor passes came from those kids. That’s a fascinating story for me.”
Additional reporting Andisiwe Makinana
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