Parliament has rejected a motion by Build One South Africa (BOSA) leader Mmusi Maimane to raise the matric pass mark from 30% to 50%. During Tuesday’s vote, 119 MPs opposed the proposal while 87 supported it. Maimane criticised both the ANC and the DA for refusing to back the change, arguing that maintaining a 30% threshold “undermines aspiration and excellence.”
However, he said the number of Members of Parliament who supported the motion gives him hope to continue pushing for higher expectations in the school system.
Education expert Professor Mary Metcalfe believes the debate has been distorted by politics rather than grounded in educational reality. “I feel very strongly that making this a political issue has been a serious error on the side of those promoting it,” she said. “And I’m actually impressed that Parliament voted against it.”
Metcalfe argues that the public misunderstands how the system works. “When you say to anybody, ‘Should we have a pass rate of 30 or 50?, the common-sense response would be to say it must be 50. But the question is wrong. Because the pass mark is not 30%,” she explained. She added that “the politicisation of this has been silencing the educational arguments,” which she said are far more complex and deserve deeper national discussion.
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