Bantu education

"Fifty percent of kids who enter school never pass out through Grade 12," said Cronje, questioning whether a school system which saw half its entrants never reach Grade 12 could hold forth 62.5 percent as "an honest reflection of the passout from the school system". 

Cronje said the current school system was much the same as Bantu education, in that it was stunting "mainly poor, mainly black" children.

"The low pass rates, the low throughput rates and the low rates of university entry passes (calculated by the institute as an effective 11,7 percent) are perhaps now the greatest single crisis facing South Africa."

"The end result is not very different from that of Bantu education."

Taken from IOL

SO the department of miseducation tells the world we have a pass rate of 62,5%.
The Institute of Race Relations said it should be considered that:

of the 920 716 students who were in Grade 11 in 2007,
only 333 681, or 64 percent, went on to write their matric examinations in 2008.

"36,2 percent is a more accurate reflection of the real effective matric pass rate than the 62,5 percent cited by Education Minister Naledi Pandor," Frans Cronje, the deputy chief executive officer of the institute, told the Cape Argus.

"You wouldn't go through 11 years and give up of your own volition.

"Something is preventing them from getting through, but we don't know exactly what," said Cronje.

Annually, there were roughly a million students per grade in all grades from Grade one to 11, "but suddenly in Grade 12 you have half that number".