Education minister aims to widen matric focus

Education minister Siviwe Gwarube wants to move the nation’s focus away from the matric pass rate number to focus on a wider range of outcomes.

She says the country has a “collective obsession” with the matric pass rate, and the quality of our basic education system has been reduced to this single figure.

“This obsession has had unintended consequences and has incentivised the wrong kinds of behaviour,” Gwarube says. “As provinces, districts and schools competed to have the highest matric pass rate, we saw acts of culling, perceived weaker learners were not being promoted into Grade 12 in order to artificially strengthen the potential matric pass rate, we saw gatekeeping, in which learners who should be progressed as per the rules, are kept back in Grade 11, again in an effort to inflate the matric pass rate.”
She says learners have been encouraged to take Maths Literacy over Mathematics to maximise the number of learners who will pass and increase the matric pass rate.

“This obsession with the matric pass rate and its perverse incentives has been to the detriment of this country’s ability to produce skills in STEM professions, in Accounting and Economic Sciences,” she says. “This must change if our country is to be economically competitive, it needs deep and meaningful skills in STEM and other gateway subjects.”

Going forward, Gwarube says that provincial performance will be ranked through a broader basket of quality indicators. This will include the number of Bachelor passes, distinctions, the levels of learner retention, as well as the rate of participation and performance in gateway subjects such as Mathematics, Physical Sciences, Accounting and Economics, amongst others.

“This approach will allow provinces to benchmark performance more meaningfully and identify areas requiring intervention.

“The question will not only be whether learners passed, but whether provinces are improving literacy, numeracy, retention and gateway subject participation.”

The Class of 2026 is the largest full-time cohort to sit the National Senior Certificate examinations to date, with 815 051 full-time candidates registered for the October/November 2026 examinations. This is an increase of 48 508 from last year. In addition, 147 781 part-time candidates have registered, which includes candidates seeking to improve their previous results.

This brings the total registration numbers for the 2026 NSC Exams to 962 832 candidates.

Gwarube comments: “The growth in full-time registration is an indication that learners are staying in school, that they are finishing matric in good time, and, as the results of last year show, more and more are being successful in their first attempt at the NSC Matric Exams.

“This is a sign of a maturing system, a system on the rise, that is giving near-universal access to education.”

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