The DA mum on ‘real matric pass rate’ calculations

Opposition parties have cried foul since Democratic Alliance (DA) MP Siviwe Gwarube became Basic Education Minister, accusing the party of dropping its publication of South Africa’s “real pass rate”.

Breaking from a long-standing tradition, the DA has been relatively quiet for a second year on its annual tradition of providing South Africans with the “real matric pass rate”, which accounts for learners who dropped out before reaching matric. 

The Minister and the party have, however, emphasised that there is a high rate of school dropouts from Grade 10 to Grade 12 and performance difficulties in key subjects, including mathematics.

When asked by Newsday if the party still believes that the dropout rate should be factored into the matric pass rate, DA spokesperson Nazley Shariff said that the party still believes in having honest conversations about the state of the education system.

“It’s not like we can say the system is incredible and it’s working perfectly. It’s important for the minister to speak honestly and truthfully and not hide behind glossy statements,” she said. 

For several years, the DA released the figure shortly after matric results were published, calculating the students who dropped out after Grade 10 and before writing their matric exams, disputing the number released by the Department of Education.

The party calculated this number by taking the number of students enrolled in grade 10 and counting how many of these students went on to write their matric exams without dropping out. 

Calculating the dropout rate from Grade 10 accounts for those who leave school after Grade 9 to complete their matric at technical and vocational education and training institutions (TVETs). 

For the class of 2023, the party said that the bachelor’s pass rate of 82.9% dropped to 55.3% when accounting for those who did not make it to matric. This was an increase from 2022’s 54.6% figure. 

The ‘real pass rate’

Despite this, the Minister made no mention of the “real matric pass rate” while revealing the NSC results on 12 January, and the DA neglected to publish this figure for 2025 in their subsequent statement. 

In January 2024, the DA said that this “real pass rate” is an “excellent indicator” of the success of the Basic Education Minister and the Department itself. 

It further accused the ANC government, which was in control of the department at the time, of focusing on quantity over quality and said, “this skewed focus on how many learners can be pushed through the system, should be scrapped in favour of a focus on the quality of skills gained.”

However, in July 2024, DA MP Gwarube was appointed Minister of Education. Suddenly, the party became content to publish the official Departmental pass rate and ceased calculating the ‘real pass rate.’

In January 2025, the DA simply congratulated the 2024 cohort. Calculations done by BusinessTech, however, found that the “real pass rate” remained around 56% for the class of 2024.

In January 2026, the DA again did not question the 88% official pass rate, congratulating matrics on their achievement and the minister on her work in education.

The party, and Gwarube during her speech, acknowledged, however, that there is a high rate of school dropouts from Grade 10 to Grade 12 and performance difficulties in key subjects, including mathematics.

“Nationally, only about 84% make it from Grade 10 to Grade 11, and about 78% from Grade 11 to Grade 12,” Gwarube said.

“And that is why learner retention matters: if learners exit the system before Grade 12, the system is not yet delivering quality at scale – regardless of how strong the final pass rate is.”

Nothing to be proud of – Opposition parties

Parties outside of the Government of National Unity, meanwhile, have taken on the role of calculating the ‘real matric pass rate.’

ActionSA Parliamentary Chief Whip Lerato Ngobeni said the party calculated the real matric pass rate for 2025 to be 57.7%. 

According to ActionSA, 1.14 million learners entered Grade 10 in 2023. This means that the 656,000 learners who passed their exams amount to a pass rate of 57.7%, not 88% as the minister announced. 

Prior to the publishing of the class of 2025’s matric results, Build One South Africa (BOSA) calculated that, of the 1.1 million learners who enrolled in schools in 2014, only 715,000 registered to write matric exams. 

This figure does not account for those who leave for TVET colleges, but indicates that the school dropout crisis has continued long after Gwarube took over the portfolio. 

“Despite the Basic Education Minister’s triumphal rhetoric, nearly half of the learners who started the final phase of schooling did not successfully complete matric,” Ngobeni said.

“This gap is not an abstraction. It reflects a system that continues to lose learners through dropout, repetition, and disengagement long before they ever reach the examination hall.”

Education Expert Jonathan Jansen, responding to the release of the 2025 results, said that this “reflects the results of about half of the students who started in grade 12,” and is “nothing to be proud of” for the ministry of education.

He added that “the annual performance by ministers of education serves a political purpose; to convince the middle classes not to abandon the public examination.”