The release of the 2025 National Senior Certificate (NSC) results marked a historic moment for South African education.
This is the largest matric class ever and the highest national pass rate in the country’s history. But behind the numbers there are deeper lessons about quality, access, inequality and the future of schooling.
Here are six crucial points every reader should understand about the 2025 matric results.
1. Highest pass rate in history
The national pass rate for 2025 stands at 88%, an increase of about 0.7% from 2024 and the highest ever recorded in South Africa. More than 656,000 learners passed the NSC examinations.
KwaZulu-Natal emerged as the best performing province with a 90.6% pass rate, followed closely by the Free State with 89.33% and Gauteng at 89.06%. Even the lowest-performing province, the Eastern Cape, achieved over 84%, meaning that every province crossed the 80% mark.
2. Largest matric class ever
Over 900,000 candidates wrote the final exams at around 6,000 centres across the country. This reflects major growth in access to Grade 12, but the Minister emphasised that quantity alone is not enough – quality must follow.
Although about 1.2 million learners entered Grade 1 in 2014, only about 778,000 full-time learners were enrolled in Grade 12 in 2025, showing that many learners are lost between Grades 10 and 12. Nationally, only about 78% of learners make it from Grade 11 to Grade 12.
3. Mathematics and Science remain biggest weakness
Only 34% of candidates wrote Mathematics, with the majority choosing Mathematical Literacy. Even more concerning is that although more learners took Mathematics in 2025, performance dropped, with the Maths pass rate falling from 69% in 2024 to 64% in 2025. Accounting also dropped from 81% to 78%, while Physical Science improved slightly to 77%.
This confirms that weak foundations in early grades continue to block access to key gateway subjects such as Mathematics, Physical Science and Accounting – subjects that determine access to scarce skills and higher education.
4. A Bachelor Pass matters more than just passing
While the overall Bachelor pass percentage dipped slightly from about 48% to 46%, the actual number of learners achieving Bachelor passes increased by 8,700 to over 345,000 learners – the highest number ever
In addition, 28% achieved Diploma passes and 13.5% achieved Higher Certificate passes
These categories matter because they determine what learners can study after school – not just whether they passed.
5. No-Fee and rural schools are producing more excellence
For the first time, over 66% of all Bachelor passes came from no-fee schools, showing that excellence is spreading into the poorest communities. More no-fee schools are now achieving pass rates between 80% and 100%.
This challenges the old belief that high performance is limited to affluent schools and proves that poverty is not destiny when schools are supported and districts function effectively.
6. Inequality starts long before matric
Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube stressed that the real crisis is not in Grade 12, but in the early years of schooling. Only 42% of children aged 4 to 5 are developmentally “on track”, meaning most learners arrive in Grade 1 already behind.
To fix this, government has:
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Registered over 12,000 ECD centres in 2025, taking the total to over 33,000.
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Invested R496 million to create over 100,000 new early learning spaces in rural provinces.
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Set a new target of 250,000 new ECD spaces by next year.
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Launched bilingual Grade 4 assessments and expanded Mother Tongue-based Bilingual Education.
According to Umalusi, the quality assurance body, the 2025 matric exams were written in more than 300 subjects across approximately 9,400 examination centres nationwide. An additional 17,413 candidates sat for the Independent Examinations Board (IEB) exams, which recorded a pass rate of 98.31%.
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