President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Monday that while the 2025 Matric results showed a steady improvement in quantity and of quality, enhancing the acheivements of recent years, challenges remain.

Last week, Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube announced that the Matric Class of 2025 achieved the highest pass rate in the country’s history.

More than 650 000 learners passed the National Senior Certificate, achieving a pass rate of 88%. This is an improvement from 87.3% in 2024.

“They have contributed to a dramatic increase in the number of South Africans older than 20 who have a matric qualification, increasing from 30% in 2002 to 52% in 2024,” Ramaphosa said in his weekly letter to the nation.

He said this showed the value of government’s investment in education and the efforts made to level the playing field for all children when it came to quality education.

He said global experience had shown that one of the most effective ways to reduce poverty was to ensure that female children received a good education.

“It is therefore significant that in 2025 more girls sat for the matric exams than boys, and that the pass rates of boys and girls were much the same. A higher proportion of girls attained admission to bachelor studies than boys, and nearly twice as many obtained distinctions. This bodes well for the continuation of their studies at universities and colleges,” he noted.

Ramaphosa said it was also significant that more than two-thirds of all bachelor passes came from schools in the most disadvantaged communities, classified as quintiles 1-3.

He said this was a testament to the determination of the learners and their teachers, and to policies such as no-fee schools and the child support grant.

“Taken together with the expansion in recent years of funding for tertiary students from poor backgrounds, these results give us encouragement that many of these young people will be able to lift themselves and their families out of poverty,” he said.

He said government was encouraged that 90% of learners with special education needs passed matric and 52% achieved bachelor passes, both higher than the national average.

“Our task is now to ensure that more learners with special needs are able to write matric exams,” he said.

Meanwhile, he stated that of the 1.2-million children who started grade one in 2014, only 778 000 made it through to grade 12 in 2025.

He said this was nearly half a million young people who left school before grade 12.

“As we strive to improve the quality of our matric results, we must work harder to ensure that more children complete their schooling,” he said.

Ramaphosa explained that another challenge was the drop in performance in subjects such as mathematics.

He highlighted that while more learners were taking these subjects, government had seen a drop in the pass rates for mathematics and accounting.

“These are subjects that our learners need to excel at if they are to succeed in a rapidly changing economy.

“In working to address these challenges, we are starting with the foundations of learning. In the same week that the results came out for the class of 2025, the class of 2037 started their first day of grade one,” he said.