By Levy Masiteng
Build One South Africa (BOSA) and ActionSA have challenged the government’s announcement of an 88% matric pass rate for the class of 2025, and have instead put forward “real” pass rates of 54.7% and 57.7%, respectively.
The criticism came after Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube announced on Monday night that the Class of 2025 had achieved an overall pass rate of 88% — the highest in the country’s history.
ActionSA spokesperson Lerato Ngobeni said that the government’s celebration of the 88% pass rate was “triumphal rhetoric” that masked the true performance of South Africa’s basic education system.
BOSA spokesperson Roger Solomons echoed this sentiment, saying the 30% pass mark was “nothing more than Bantu Education in the modern era”, entrenching low expectations and masking systemic failure.
While welcoming the achievements of learners who passed, both opposition parties said the headline figure masked the true extent of dropout and exclusion within the education system.
According to BOSA, out of 1,250,791 learners who started school in grade 1 in 2014, only 684,640 full-time learners passed matric in 2025, indicating a system that was “jeopardising the future of our young people”.
“This means over 566 000 young people didn’t make it; the 88% pass rate is misleading,” said Solomons.
ActionSA said that nearly half of learners who entered the final phase of schooling never successfully completed matric.
“Using the accepted cohort methodology, the effective completion rate falls to 57.7%,” said Ngobeni.
“Despite the minister’s triumphal rhetoric, nearly half of the learners who started the final phase of schooling did not successfully complete matric.”
“This gap is not an abstraction,” she said. “It reflects a system that continues to lose learners through dropout, repetition and disengagement long before they ever reach the examination hall. Success is defined by shrinking the denominator rather than improving outcomes.”
Both parties said that poverty, inequality and weak institutional support were major drivers of learner attrition, particularly between Grades 10 and 12.
“The sharp drop-off between Grades 10 and 12 shows that hundreds of thousands of learners are being lost before matric,” Solomons said. “Often poverty forces young people out of classrooms and into work opportunities to support their families.”
Additionally, ActionSA criticised the state of school infrastructure and learner safety, pointing to the continued use of pit toilets in some schools.
“A system that cannot guarantee basic safety and dignity for learners cannot credibly claim success based on pass percentages alone,” Ngobeni said.
The Democratic Alliance struck a more measured tone, congratulating the Class of 2025 while warning against an overemphasis on headline pass rates.
Gwarube belongs to the DA and was made basic education minister as part of the country’s government of national unity negotiations in 2024.
“The real story in the matric results is not a single percentage, but whether the system improved on quality indicators and whether learners are being retained through to Grade 12,” said DA spokesperson for Education Horatio Hendricks.
He said learner dropouts between Grades 10 and 12 remained “the biggest pressure point in the system” and cautioned that “a headline pass rate cannot hide” the fact that too many learners are lost along the way.
Hendricks also criticised attempts by provincial leadership to deflect responsibility for weak performance, and stressed that learner safety and accountability must come first.
BOSA and ActionSA both said that fundamental reform was required, starting with assessment standards.
“To fix this crisis, the 30% pass mark must be scrapped and replaced with a 50% minimum for all subjects,” Solomons said. “The current standard entrenches low expectations, inflates pass rates and masks systemic failure.”
BOSA said it was “deeply unfortunate” that the ANC, DA, FF+, PA and Al-Jama-ah voted against its recent parliamentary motion to end the 30% pass mark.
“These parties sold out the future of South Africa’s young people, telling them that low standards and mediocrity are acceptable,” said BOSA.
INSIDE EDUCATION
