Maimane reignites the fight over SA’s matric standards in push for 50% pass rate

Mmusi Maimane, Build One South Africa’s leader, set the tone early in a parliamentary debate on his party’s draft resolution to replace the current 30% matric pass mark with a 50% minimum standard, giving a powerful and impassioned declaration on the urgent need for greater ambition and true global competitiveness within South Africa’s education system.

“Our ambition must be better than where we are in terms of our term scores. It must be that we want to be global players who can influence and change the world,” Maimane said at the debate on Friday, 28 November 2025.

He underscored that countries that have enjoyed sustained success over recent decades have done so squarely on the back of strong, world-class education systems that demand excellence from the outset. Maimane argued that South Africa could not afford to lag behind when the global stage required learners equipped not just to participate, but to lead and innovate.

Using the example of “Sethu”, a learner from a disadvantaged background, Maimane illustrated the deep-rooted systemic failures that plague South Africa’s education system, turning what should be a pathway to opportunity into a cycle of limitation.

He painted a vivid picture of Sethu’s journey, starting from the very beginning: poor access to quality early childhood development (ECD) programmes, where foundational learning should take root but often withers due to neglect. Overcrowded classrooms stretch teachers thin, with unfavourable learner-to-teacher ratios that make personalised attention a rarity, while the glaring absence of libraries deprives children of books and quiet spaces to foster curiosity and reading habits.

Maimane delved deeper, highlighting inadequate sanitation facilities that disrupt daily learning and undermine dignity, all culminating in devastating early literacy failures by Grade 4. These early barriers do not vanish; they cascade relentlessly through a learner’s entire schooling experience, compounding year after year as subjects grow more complex.

“Despite progressing through the grades, learners like Sethu lack mastery of foundational knowledge, limiting their chances for further education or gainful employment,” Maimane said.

He urged Parliament to view raising the pass mark not as an isolated fix, but as the cornerstone of broader, comprehensive reforms.

Maimane clarified common confusion regarding the current 30% minimum pass mark in certain Grade 12 subjects. He explained that this threshold does not denote passing matric overall, but rather shows basic proficiency in individual subjects. Using mathematics and science pass rates as examples, he illustrated what the drop in pass rates would be if the minimum was raised to 50% — from 69% to 30% in mathematics, and 75% to 29% in science.

Maimane warned that clinging to these low proficiency standards left learners woefully ill-equipped for the futures awaiting them — worlds demanding high-level mastery in mathematics, science, artificial intelligence and cutting-edge technology, where half measures simply did not compete.

Early grade literacy, numeracy deficits

Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube stressed the critical importance of grounding the entire discussion in clear, verifiable facts rather than rhetoric or distortion.

“We all want to achieve higher standards, stronger outcomes and a system that is fit for purpose in a competitive global economy,” she said

Gwarube was quick to address one of the most persistent public misconceptions head-on, clarifying that the popular notion of a flat “30% overall pass mark” for matric was entirely incorrect. Instead, she explained, learners must meet a complex, multi-layered, three-tiered set of requirements to obtain the National Senior Certificate (NSC), ensuring a baseline of competence across key areas. It includes:

Breaking it down precisely, Gwarube outlined the minimum pass criteria: learners need at least 40% in their home language (a compulsory threshold reflecting communication essentials), 40% in two further subjects, and 30% in three additional subjects — often excluding Life Orientation.

This structure demands balanced performance rather than mediocrity across the board. To drive the point home with stark data, she revealed that last year, out of approximately 724,000 learners who wrote the National Senior Certificate, only 189 passed with just this absolute minimum combination.

“That’s only 0.003%,” Gwarube emphasised, underscoring that the overwhelming majority — more than 99.997% — exceed these low thresholds, achieving higher marks that aligned with Diploma, Higher Certificate, or even Bachelor’s pass levels.

Gwarube warned that simply raising the matric pass mark in isolation would fail to address the underlying crisis plaguing the system: profound foundational learning deficits built up over years of neglect.

“Raising the matric pass rate alone will not solve the foundational learning crisis,” she cautioned, pointing directly to the heart of the problem — early literacy and numeracy gaps that sabotage long-term success.

“If a child cannot read for meaning by Grade 4, their chances of succeeding beyond diminish sharply,” she added, noting how these early failures rippled through maths, science and beyond, trapping learners in a cycle of underachievement.

She outlined the department’s comprehensive reform efforts as the real path forward: targeted investments in early-grade programmes, robust teacher development to improve classroom delivery, infrastructure upgrades like sanitation and libraries, refined assessment tools for better diagnostics, and the establishment of the National Education and Training Council — an independent expert body to provide evidence-based guidance aligned with international best practices.​

“We cannot achieve higher standards through slogans or single-number targets, but [through] evidence-based reform and coordinated actions across curricula, assessment, teacher development, infrastructure and early learning,” Gwarube said.

Voices from Parliament

Portfolio Committee on Higher Education Chairperson Tebogo Letsie highlighted education’s critical role in overcoming South Africa’s colonial legacies, poverty and persistent inequality.

“You cannot grow public confidence in our education system without being honest about performance,” Letsie asserted. He dismantled the common misconception surrounding the 30% pass mark, stating unequivocally that “30% is not a pass mark in the curriculum of education; a candidate who attains an overall aggregate of 30% across the subjects will not meet the minimum requirement”.

Letsie advocated for a nuanced approach recognising South Africa’s diverse society and historical context, including the three-stream model (academic, vocational, occupational) for varied pathways. He called for urgent action on inequalities in teacher training, resources, infrastructure and curriculum to boost performance.

Read more: Education experts weigh in: Matric results show promise but raise critical questions for future

EFF MP Mandla Shikwambana lambasted the government’s 30-year commitment to a 30% pass mark, insisting it undermined black children’s potential in a global knowledge economy where low scores barred entry to vital professions like engineering, piloting, medicine, auditing, accounting and IT.

“Our children are not failing. They are being failed by overcrowded classrooms, failed by schools without libraries, laboratories or learning tools needed to build confident thinkers, failed by teachers who themselves came through this collapsed education,” he said.

Shikwambana demanded scrapping the 30% threshold for a 50% standard, driven by faith in black excellence to empower youth from Diepsloot, Ngoye, Soweto, Bushbuckridge and Mamelodi to penetrate monopolised sectors, compete locally, thrive globally and shatter inequality cycles. He stressed that a national investment in world-class education began with belief in every child’s capacity.

Busaphi Machi for the Inkatha Freedom Party condemned signalling 30% as sufficient, ignoring 70% of learners’ potential and normalising mediocrity. This allowed false achievement and set youth up for workplace and higher education failure — especially in socioeconomically strained schools.

“A child who is told that 30% is good enough is being prepared for disappointment, not for success,” she warned, advocating a 50% minimum as honest investment rather than punishment.

Rise Mzansi MP Makashule Gana issued a sharp critique of the nation’s obsession with pass rate percentages.

“Threshold defines success. But I want to ask today, are we becoming passé the same way that consumers [are] price sensitive? Are we obsessive?” Gana questioned, warning the assembly against a reductive focus on pass rates.

He cautioned that this fixation risked “devaluing certificates, producing learners with papers but no competencies”, likening the phenomenon to companies shrinking product sizes while hiking prices. He suggested that numbers alone did not equate to real learning or capability.

DA MP Nazley Sharif joined the plea for a truthful and evidence-based discourse, saying: “South Africa deserves a clear, honest and evidence-based conversation about learner achievement, not soundbites or misrepresentation.”

Sharif highlighted the small fraction of learners who hit the absolute minimum, only about 100 out of 700,000 last year, pointing out that these minimums represented real academic expectations, not symbolic gestures. She stressed the urgency of systemic upgrades, remarking: “Quality comes from raising the bar. It comes from raising the floor.”

For Sharif, the critical crisis was foundational literacy, with early gaps in the first 1,000 days excluding many learners from future success. This attention on early education signalled a broader commitment to holistic improvements, rather than superficial or misleading metrics.

Expert insights on persistent debates

Every year, the 30% pass threshold for the National Senior Certificate results generates heated discussions. Education expert Mary Metcalfe was clear that the 30% figure was often misunderstood.

“Anybody who thinks that the class, that the National Senior Certificate result is made up of 30% passes, is not understanding how the pass works,” she said.

“When learners receive their National Senior Certificate results, they receive one of four possible results, which allows for a wider range of differentiation and different learning pathways after writing the National Senior Certificate.”

Metcalfe expressed frustration that this nuance was often ignored in public debates.

Nicky Roberts, a director at Kelello Consulting, criticised South Africa’s obsessive focus on the “30% matric pass mark” as persistent fake news and a distraction from genuine education quality, clarifying that the National Senior Certificate was a tiered qualification (Bachelor’s, Diploma, Higher Certificate) rather than a flat 30% threshold per subject, with universities selecting based on performance levels rather than guaranteeing entry.

Read more: Matric: Scrap the 30% pass mark! It’s (not) a joke

Roberts warned that raising pass marks to 50% could spike dropouts, overcrowd classrooms with older repeaters, and narrow teaching without boosting learning, while acknowledging that systemic barriers like poverty outweighed individual expectations.

Ultimately, she advocated scrapping the pass/fail binary altogether — issuing certificates with marks for employers/universities to judge — while tracking systemic indicators like throughput rates, gateway subject attainment and early grade literacy to refocus on quality teaching, curriculum, lifelong learning and structural poverty reduction over simplistic “pass” celebrations. DM