The Basic Education Department has spent years perfecting tools to measure failure while starving the conditions that produce success. We know what works. We choose not to fund it.
When the 2025 matric results were announced on 12 January 2026, the pattern was predictable. The Independent Examinations Board (IEB) achieved a 98.31% pass rate, with 89.12% of candidates qualifying for bachelor’s degree study. The Department of Basic Education’s (DBE) National Senior Certificate results: 88% pass rate.
When I was head of the foundation phase at an independent school, parents would regularly ask: “Do you follow CAPS or IEB?” There is no IEB curriculum. Not until Grade 10. Every school in South Africa – public, private, prestigious, struggling – teaches the same Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS) from Grade R to Grade 9.
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The IEB is an examination board, not a curriculum. Their own website states that they base their assessments on CAPS. Umalusi confirms that universities cannot distinguish between IEB and DBE certificates.
Same curriculum. Same certificate. So, what exactly are parents paying for?
A 2019 study from UCT’s Development Policy Research Unit found that IEB pupils perform better at university – between 1.6 and 6.5 percentage points higher in first-year GPA. But when researchers decomposed this advantage into a “teaching effect” versus a “testing effect” they found something remarkable. “The majority of the impact of the IEB comes simply from the different exam, and that teaching effects are minimal.” It’s not the teaching; it’s the assessment style.
IEB exams demand application, synthesis and transfer of knowledge. Pupils drilled on those question types develop those cognitive habits. The study also found that “the IEB effect seems to be independent of resource availability, and that simply the exposure to the alternative testing method is sufficient for students to see significant improvements”.
We’ve known for years what produces better outcomes. Assessment that demands thinking, not recall. A good, confident and supported teacher can make magic happen in a CAPS classroom.
But the inverse is also true – and the inverse is South Africa’s reality. So, why hasn’t the Department of Basic Education adopted these approaches nationally?
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