As a record number of candidates sit their final exams, last year’s results show learners at no-fee schools are doing far more than keeping pace. They are producing most of the country’s university entrants.

When the 2026 National Senior Certificate (NSC) exams opened on Tuesday, 13 October, the Department of Basic Education reported 962 832 registered candidates, the most ever, spread across roughly 7 100 exam centres. Among them are learners who will be the first in their families to finish school, and some who will be the first in their school’s history to do so.

The class before them set a high bar. The class of 2025 achieved a national pass rate of 88%, the highest on record, and all 75 education districts cleared 80%, a first, according to SAnews. Learners at no-fee schools were not far behind. Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Basic Education (2026) reported that 86.5% of candidates from no-fee schools passed in 2025, compared with 91.1% from fee-paying schools.

Those numbers challenge the persistent assumption that a no-fee school cannot compete with a fee-paying one. Quintile 1 to 3 schools serve the country’s poorest communities. They may not charge compulsory fees and instead receive a higher per-learner state allocation, according to the Department of Basic Education. Yet the difference between their pass rate and that of fee-paying schools is less than five percentage points.

Silikamva High School in Hout Bay, Cape Town, a quintile 3 no-fee school, recorded a 100% pass rate in 2025, with 76% of its learners earning bachelor passes, the Western Cape Education Department reported. In 2019, its pass rate stood at 40.4%. Principal Siphathisiwe Nkahla-Nkohla credited “the strong academic culture we have inculcated as a school”.

In Eerste River, Cape Town, Apex High School, a no-fee public school operated in partnership with the non-profit Apex Education, achieved a 95.4% pass rate in 2024, with 62.9% of learners earning a bachelor pass, the school’s highest yet. Apex Education’s stated mission is to provide quality education to South African children irrespective of their socio-economic background. Its results suggest what’s possible when strong leadership, committed teachers, and the right partners pull in the same direction.

Talent and effort, however, can only stretch so far. President Cyril Ramaphosa noted that of the 1.2 million children who started Grade 1 in 2014, 778 000 reached Grade 12 in 2025. The gap also widens in the quality of passes. The same committee report shows that 42.4% of learners at no-fee schools qualified for bachelor’s studies in 2025, down from 44.6% the year before. This is in a country where an estimated 57.3% of children are multidimensionally poor.

This is the gap GetGo Fund was set up to help close. Founded by education social entrepreneur Taddy Blecher and fintech entrepreneur Mark Collie, the Cape Town-based crowdfunding platform helps schools raise money for specific needs, from bursaries and school fees to food, teacher salaries and learning materials. Schools can use it for free, campaigns are vetted, and donors can receive Section 18A tax certificates.

One campaign live on the platform belongs to Maharishi Invincibility High School in Johannesburg, an independent school that charges its learners nothing. This year, its first-ever matric class of 62 learners is writing the NSC. The school is raising R620 000, about R10 000 per learner, to see the class through to graduation. Reflecting on her years at the school, one member of that class wrote that confidence is “simply knowing that you deserve to be in the room”.

“Every October we are reminded that talent is spread evenly across this country, even when resources are not,” says Donna Shefer, CEO of GetGo Fund. “The learners writing in no-fee and fee-free schools this month have already shown what they are capable of. Our role is to make sure money is never the reason a child does not reach the finish line.”

Over the coming weeks, close to a million young people will put years of work on paper. The class of 2025 showed that a school’s fee structure does not set the ceiling for its learners. With the right support, the class of 2026 has every chance of raising it further.