Umalusi, the education quality assurance body, has given the 2025 end-of-year examinations the green light, with more than one million Grade 12 learners preparing to write across 9 100 centres nationwide.
It conducted a comprehensive audit, from Monday 11 August to Thursday 9 October, to determine the readiness of four assessment bodies across all nine provinces — the Department of Basic Education (DBE), Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), Independent Examinations Board (IEB) and South African Comprehensive Assessment Institute (SACAI).
Scale of the examinations
More than 1 million candidates are registered for this year’s examinations across various qualifications. These include the National Senior Certificate (NSC), National Certificate Vocational (NCV) Levels 1 to 4, NATED Report 190/191 (N2-N3) Engineering Studies, and General Education and Training Certificate: Adult Basic Education and Training (GETC: ABET).
The DBE leads the pack with 766 543 new NSC candidates, plus 137 018 part-time candidates set to write the examinations. The IEB registered 17 427 NSC candidates, while SACAI has 6 174 candidates, bringing the NSC total to 927 162 candidates.
For other qualifications, the DHET registered 40 822 candidates for NCV Level 4 and 50 129 for GETC: ABET, in addition to 231 from SACAI and 469 from the IEB.
The NSC examinations will take place across 7 301 NSC centres, with the DBE operating 6 955, the IEB 263, and SACAI 83. The DHET will provide 249 centres for NCV Level 4 examinations.
An additional 1 550 centres will serve GETC: ABET examinations, with the DHET operating 1 475, the IEB 55, and SACAI 20. The total reaches 9 100 centres, with N3 centres of the DHET still to be confirmed after Tuesday 28 October.
The NSC examinations are set to commence nationally on Tuesday 21 October.
Quality assurance findings
The audit found that all question papers met quality standards after external moderation. For NSC examinations, the DBE moderated 68 subjects, the IEB 59, and SACAI 24.
The DHET’s question papers also passed moderation across NCV Level 4 (108 subjects), NATED N3 (26 subjects) and GETC: ABET (26 subjects). Additionally GETC: ABET papers from the IEB (seven subjects) and SACAI (seven subjects) were approved.
Security protocols for printing, packaging, storage, distribution and access controls across all four assessment bodies met requirements, and the training for invigilators, chief invigilators, assistant invigilators and markers from the DHET, IEB and SACAI was successfully completed.
Challenges addressed
While the DBE demonstrated proper training for invigilators, the audit identified marker shortages for History, Paper 3 for Home Languages and Paper 3 for First Additional Languages. The governing body, however, accepted the department’s mitigation strategies to address these concerns.
Umalusi also conducted risk assessments on examination centres and was satisfied that adequate measures are place to mitigate risks at centres deemed high-risk.
Timeline ahead
Marking is scheduled to take place over a staggered 33-day period, from Saturday 15 November to Thursday 18 December, with mandatory pre-marking training for all markers.
Following marking, three quality-assurance steps remain: a review by the Assessment Standards Committee, approval of result releases by the Executive Committee and the final certification process. Through this process all assessments across the various qualifications will be verified as meeting required standards before certification.
Results will be announced at a public media briefing on Thursday 9 January 2026. Successful candidates can expect certificates within three months of results approval, provided assessment bodies submit certification data on time.
a statement from the body said.
“Umalusi wishes the class of 2025 strength and determination as they enter the final lap of their journey within the general and further education and training system,”
