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DBE

National Senior Certificate Examinations 2008-2025

South Africa, 2008 - 2025
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Reference ID
zaf-dbe-nsce-2008-2025-v1.3
DOI
https://doi.org/10.25828/pcn8-pc32
Producer(s)
Department of Basic Education
Collections
South African Department of Basic Education
Metadata
Documentation in PDF DDI/XML JSON
Created on
Feb 07, 2018
Last modified
May 26, 2026
Page views
154335
Downloads
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  • Identification
  • Version
  • Scope
  • Coverage
  • Producers and sponsors
  • Data collection
  • Data appraisal
  • access_policy
  • Contacts
  • Metadata production
  • Citation

    • Identification

    Survey ID number
    zaf-dbe-nsce-2008-2025-v1.3
    Title
    National Senior Certificate Examinations 2008-2025
    Abbreviation or Acronym
    NSCE 2008-2025
    Country
    Name Country code
    South Africa zaf
    Study type
    Administrative Records, Education (ad/edu]
    Series Information
    National Senior Certification Examination 2008-2025
    Abstract
    The National Senior Certificate or NSC is the main school-leaving certificate in South Africa. This certificate is commonly known as the matriculation (matric) certificate, and is obtained after grade 12. The NSC, previously known as the Further Education and Training Certificate or FETC, replaced the Senior Certificate with effect from 2008 and was phased in starting with grade 10 in 2006. These school-level National Senior Certificate (NSC) datasets were derived by the DBE Directorate: Research Coordination, Monitoring and Evaluation (RCME) from the November NSC "343” reports received from the Directorate for National Examinations. The data used for this release cover the years 2008 to 2025
    Kind of Data
    Administrative records
    Unit of Analysis
    Institutions

    Version

    Version Description
    v1.3 Edited, anonymised dataset for licensed distribution
    Version Date
    2026-05-26
    Version Notes
    Version 1 of this dataset was provided by the Department of Basic Education in December 2014.

    Version 1.1 is this dataset cleaned and checked and converted to Stata. All of the datafiles are of version 1.1 here to reflect the processing done by DataFirst.

    Version 1.2 introduces years 2014-2016 to the dataset. Data files detailing the overall pass rate (by exam centre and gender) are also included for the first time. These datafiles were also included for years 2010-2013 (they were omitted in previous versions). All individual datasets remained versioned as 1.1 (only substantively different insofar as they were processed by DataFirst).

    Version 1.3 includes the years 2008, 2009 and 2017-2025.

    Scope

    Notes

    The dataset provides data on type of school and examination centre, subjects, and grades obtained, as well as the learners' gender.

    Topics
    Topic Vocabulary
    Secondary Education World Bank
    Girls’ Education World Bank

    Coverage

    Geographic Coverage
    The data has national coverage
    Geographic Unit
    The lowest geographical unit is district

    Producers and sponsors

    Primary investigators
    Name Affiliation
    Department of Basic Education Government of South Africa
    Other Identifications/Acknowledgments
    Name Affiliation
    Department of Basic Education Directorate: Research Coordination, Monitoring and Evaluation (RCME) Government of South Africa

    Data collection

    Dates of Data Collection
    Start End Cycle
    2008 2025 Annually
    Data Collection Mode
    • Other [oth]

    Data appraisal

    Data Appraisal
    Note that the data contains full-time candidates appearing in the November NSC examinations. Supplementary examinations in earlier years and June examinations in more recent years are excluded. Researchers should note that, during the Multiple Exam Opportunities (MEO) period, some candidates wrote subjects across more than one examination opportunity. This affects the interpretation of incomplete result statuses and means that the total numbers of candidates in this data might differ slightly from published “Total Wrote” figures in NSC reports.

    In 2019 some changes were made to the education district classifications, meaning that the district variable in the datasets from 2008 to 2018 is somewhat different from the district variable in the datasets from 2019 to 2025. The data contains separate variables for this: a district for pre 2019 and a district for post 2019 variables. The old and new district classifications are not directly comparable. Use district_pre2019 for 2008-2018 and district_post2019 for 2019-2025.

    access_policy

    Access authority
    Name Affiliation URL Email
    DataFirst University of Cape Town support@data1st.org
    Access conditions
    Licensed use files, available for non-commercial use only
    Citation requirements
    Department of Basic Education South Africa. National Senior Certification Examination 2008-2025 [dataset]. Version 1.3. Pretoria: DBE [producer], 2025. Cape Town: DataFirst [distributor], 2026. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25828/pcn8-pc32

    Contacts

    Contacts
    Name Affiliation Email URL
    DataFirst University of Cape Town support@data1st.org

    Metadata production

    Producers
    Name Affiliation Role
    DataFirst University of Cape Town Metadata producer
    Date of Metadata Production
    2026-05-26

    Metadata version

    DDI Document version
    Version 7

    Citation

    Citation
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