The matric class of 2025 has achieved a record-breaking pass rate of 88%. Picture: Supplied/File As South Africa celebrates a record-breaking matric pass rate of 88%, ActionSA says the headline pass rates do not reflect the true performance of the country’s Basic education system. The official National Senior Certificate (NSC) exam results were announced by Minister of Basic Education Siviwe Gwarube on Monday evening.
The latest pass rate is 0.7% higherthan last year’s 87.3%. However, ActionSA spokesperson Mathew George said this does not accurately reflect the matric results. “While the government celebrates an official matric pass rate of 88%, ActionSA’s analysis shows that the ‘real’ matric pass rate tells a far more sobering story.
“Using the accepted cohort methodology, measuring how many pupils passed matric relative to the 1.14 million pupils who entered Grade 10 in 2023, the effective completion rate falls to 57.7%,” George said. George said Gwarube’s “triumphal rhetoric” did not reflect that nearly half of the pupils who started the final phase of their schooling did not successfully complete matric. “This gap is not an abstraction.
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It reflects a system that continues to lose pupils through dropout, repetition, and disengagement long before they ever reach the examination hall. “It is a system where success is defined by shrinking the denominator rather than improving outcomes, and where political comfort is prioritised over honest measurement and reform,” George said. Meanwhile, the ANC said the 2025 matric results milestone is a testament to the resilience, discipline, and determination of the largest cohort to ever sit for the NSC examinations, with more than 900 000 candidates writing in 2025.
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