The Eastern Cape recorded the lowest 2025 National Senior Certificate pass rate out of nine provinces. Chris Barron asked the spokesperson for the provincial department of education, Velani Mbiza-Gola ...
Why is your department struggling to cope?
That’s a little bit broad. What do you mean “struggling to cope”?
Aren’t your matric results the worst in the country?
No. I’d beg to differ. Our matric results are not bad. They are only placed ninth in terms of [the] ranking of provinces. But if you were to look at the qualitative nature of the results and what we’ve done as a department for the past six years, year on year, we’ve been getting incremental performance of between 4% and 4.5%. That, to me, is not doing badly.
You’re saying your matric results have improved by 4%-4.5% a year?
Yes. If you look at last year, we hit a historic mark as a province. We hit 84.9% and were placed sixth in the provincial ranking. If you look at this year’s results, there has not been much of a difference from that historic mark. Because if you moved from 84.9% to 84.17%, you’d realise that’s a very nominal drop of 0.7%.
Why have you gone down and other provinces have gone up?
I’ll tell you why. Firstly, you’d recall that the Eastern Cape, in terms of enrolment, is one of the highest in the country. We’re in the top three after KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. So the number of learners that write matric is way more than other provinces. Number two, in the recent past the Eastern Cape is now officially a maths and physics province.
What does that actually mean?
It means we have the highest enrolment numbers of learners that take pure maths and physics. These are gateway subjects that form part of a career path for learners that ideally takes them somewhere because they’re skills the country needs. Unlike a situation where other provinces and other schools pass, when you get to interrogate the quality and type of subjects that they take, it’s easy to attain a pass. If you were to say they must perform in maths and physics, and accounting, they would not get the same results.
What results did your learners get in these gateway subjects?
They performed very well in physics and accounting but didn’t perform as well as we anticipated in maths, because they dropped a little bit from last year’s performance. Because we have a huge enrolment in that subject, it obviously affects the overall results of the province.
What was the pass rate for maths, science and accounting in your province?
I will have to verify the issue of the percentage. But if you look at the overall number of passes, 106,561 learners wrote the exam, and 89,694 passed. More than 45,000 were pure bachelor passes. These are learners that are ready to immediately take any module, any subject, at any university.
In other words, out of 106,561 learners, roughly 45,000 passed maths, science and accounting?
Yes.
Why did your bachelor pass rate fall from 45.78% in 2024 to 41.54% in 2025?
I wouldn’t know qualitatively what we could attribute the decline to. These are the qualitative assessments that we must now do.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.