This is a reasonable process. It is also based almost entirely on historical data about a world that is changing faster than school prospectuses are updated.

The reputational school of 2015 was built on the outcomes of learners who graduated in 2015. The teaching model it uses was designed for a graduate employment market that existed in 2005.

What the old metrics actually measure - and what they miss

Matric pass rates measure how many learners passed matric. They do not measure when those learners were first identified as struggling. They do not measure whether the school intervened before the gap became irreversible. They do not measure what those learners believed about themselves by the time they sat for their examinations or what they chose not to pursue because that belief had already formed.

Reputation measures historical output. It does not measure current practice. A school with a 30-year reputation built its name on the learners who passed through its classrooms decades ago. Whether the system those learners went through is the same system operating today and whether that system is fit for the decade ahead is a different question, and not one that reputation answers.

Facilities measure investment in infrastructure. They do not measure whether a teacher managing 40 learners in a well-resourced classroom can identify, in week two of the term, that a specific learner is beginning to disengage from a specific subject.

The questions that actually predict outcomes

The parents who are thinking further ahead are asking different questions. Not just 'what are the matric results?' but 'what does this school know about my child right now, this week?' Not just 'how many distinctions did they produce?' but 'when did they find out that a learner was struggling, and what did they do about it?'

Not just 'what curriculum do they follow?' but 'what will my child know how to do at 25 that they could not have learned in a traditional classroom?'

These questions do not have a place on most school prospectuses. They belong to a different conversation about what education is actually for — and that conversation is the one Teneo has been having with South African families for eight years.

Eight years of data. What it actually shows.

Independent actuarial analysis of the full Teneo learner population (2023–2025) shows an average mark improvement of 12% in year one and 25% by year four. This analysis was conducted by qualified actuaries applying standard statistical methodologies to the entire learner cohort. It is not sample-based.

The 12% and 25% improvement figures are not marketing claims. They are the product of independent, qualified actuaries applying standard statistical methodologies to the entire Teneo learner population over a two-year period. The dataset is not a selected sample. It is every learner.

What the data shows is not that Teneo selects for high performers. The 1-in-3 statistic that one in three Teneo learners has a diagnosed learning barrier makes clear that Teneo's learner population is not a filtered cohort of already-thriving children. The improvement is system-wide because the system is designed to catch every learner, not just the ones who would have succeeded regardless.

21% of Teneo's top 100 most improved learners have a self-reported learning barrier. These are not outliers. They are the direct result of a school that identifies risk early enough to intervene before the gap defines the learner.

The Teneo 2025 matric results in context

In 2025, Teneo's matric cohort of 892 learners achieved an 80% pass rate - 8% above the national SACAI average. 90% qualified for tertiary studies. 406 distinctions were awarded, representing a 22% increase on the previous year.

These numbers are meaningful not because they demonstrate that Teneo produces outstanding results in a vacuum, but because they are achieved by a learner population that includes a significant proportion of learners who had difficult experiences in mainstream schooling before they arrived. The improvement trajectory is the story. Not the destination - the direction, and the consistency of the movement.

What a different bet looks like

The parents choosing schools the old way are not wrong. They are making a bet. The bet is that the next twelve years of their child's education will produce outcomes best measured by the same metrics that worked in 2005. For some learners, in some schools, that bet will pay off.

But it is worth being clear about what the bet is. It is a bet that your child will be one of the learners who thrives in a system designed for a previous era. It is a bet that the gap between when they start struggling and when someone finds out will not be long enough to change what they believe about themselves. It is a bet that the skills the system emphasises, examination performance, content recall, compliance with structure will still be the primary signals the world uses to value a person in 2035.

That may be true. But it is a bet with more uncertainty attached to it than it used to have.

How to make the decision with more information

Choosing a school is one of the most consequential decisions a parent makes. It should not be made on the basis of proximity, reputation, or what other parents in your social circle have chosen. It should be made on the basis of the most current information available about what different schools actually do — not what their prospectus says they do.

Ask the school you are considering: how will you tell me if my child starts falling behind, and how quickly will you tell me? How do you track individual learner progress between formal assessments? What does your data show about the trajectory of learners across multiple years, not just their final matric results?

If the school cannot answer those questions with specificity, that is information too.