Out of the 1m South African learners who entered Grade 10 in 2019, only 733k enrolled in the National Senior Certificate matric exams in 2021, resulting in a dropout rate between grade 10 to 12 of 33%. When taking this into consideration, the matric pass rate for 2021 falls to 51%. However, this is a significant improvement compared to the 2019 pass rate, which stood at 39% when considering dropout rates.

Source: one, two