By Thapelo Molefe
KwaZulu-Natal overcame years of financial pressure, damaging floods, and persistent staffing shortages to finish as South Africa’s top-performing province in the 2025 National Senior Certificate results with a 90.6% pass rate – up from 89.52% in 2024.
It overtook the Free State for first place and also delivered six of the country’s top 10 districts, including uMkhanyakude, one of South Africa’s most rural areas.
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Last year was a turbulent year for education in the province.
Severe floods damaged school infrastructure in several areas, compounding long-standing budget pressures that have limited the department’s ability to appoint teachers, repair facilities and procure learning and teaching support materials.
By March 2025, the KZN Department of Education had already overspent its budget, triggering partial administration and urgent interventions by the national government.
The province’s leadership credits its performance to a deliberate focus on disadvantaged schools and sustained commitment from educators, learners, and parents across socio-economic divides.
“We have a plan, which we call the academic improvement plan, with six pillars,” according to KZN Department of Education head Dr Nkosinathi Ngcobo.
“It’s a simple plan that is followed by all our schools, which gives strategic guidance on what needs to be done.”
“We are focusing on rural and township schools unapologetically, in terms of assisting them with resources and support,” he said.
The strategy, he said, was beginning to yield visible results across the province.
“Our rural districts are performing even better than some of the districts which are in urban areas across the country,” Ngcobo said.
“uMkhanyakude District is in the deepest rural areas, but it’s in the top two in the country. It’s the fruit of our focus on previously disadvantaged schools.”
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He said the department’s emphasis on no-fee schools was informed by where the bulk of learners are located.
“We realised that this is where the majority of learners are – the Quintile 1, 2 and 3 schools – and that is where support must be directed,” Ngcobo said.
Ngcobo acknowledged that financial pressures remained the department’s most persistent obstacle, with far-reaching consequences across the system.
“When you have financial challenges, you can’t appoint staff, you can’t repair infrastructure on time, and even your audit outcomes are affected because you don’t have managers in place,” he said.
“When you separate them, it looks like many challenges, but in fact it’s one challenge with many facets.”
Despite these constraints, Ngcobo said the province had leaned heavily on its human capital.
“In spite of the limited resources that we have, the main resource we have is our teachers,” he said. “No one would expect that we would be number one in the country under these conditions, but it’s focus, focus, focus.”
He added that criticism of the department had been used as motivation rather than distraction.
“We shut out the noise, but we listen to our critics and we improve. In fact, they are the fuel that fuels our passion and our resolve to turn around the narrative that achievement is the preserve of the privileged.”
Private-sector and civil society partnerships also played a role in supporting schools. Ngcobo cited organisations such as the National Education Collaboration Trust (NECT) and VVOB among several partners working with the department.
“There are many partners from the private sector who have taken an interest in the KZN Department of Education, and we share this success with them. They have contributed to where we are today,” he said.
KwaZulu-Natal MEC for Education Siphosihle Hlomuka echoed this view, attributing the results to collective effort rather than isolated pockets of excellence.
“The main reason is the commitment from our educators, the officials at district and head office level, our learners and their parents,” Hlomuka said.
“Education is a social challenge. It needs everyone to work together.”
He said the fact that six KZN districts ranked in the national top 10 showed that improvement was spread across the province.
“It’s not about one district. It’s about education across KwaZulu-Natal,” he said.
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The national NSC pass rate was 88%. Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube said this was evidence that “excellence” was becoming entrenched in township and rural schools. She noted that more than 66% of bachelor passes were achieved by learners from no-fee schools, including districts such as uMkhanyakude and Umlazi.
“Poverty is not destiny,” Gwarube said, adding that strong districts and sustained support were key to narrowing historical performance gaps.
INSIDE EDUCATION
