Adult matric: finishing school at 25, 35 or 50

A promotion comes up and the requirement says matric. Or a college application does. Or a child starts Grade 8 and something about that makes the whole thing impossible to leave alone any longer.

Adults phone us about this more often than anyone expects, and they nearly always open the same way — an apology, and then some version of I know I am too old for this.

You are not. The oldest routes into a qualification are open specifically to you, and one of them is easier at forty than it was at seventeen.

What is actually available to an adult

Three roads, and they suit quite different situations.

The departmental route

The Department of Basic Education runs routes for adults who need to complete a school-leaving qualification, including provision for candidates over 21 who already have some previous credits. It is the cheapest option by a distance, and if you already hold part of a certificate it is usually where to start.

The requirements and the closing dates move, and we are not the department, so do not plan around anything we say here. Phone your district office and ask what applies to your record specifically. Take your old statement of results with you if you still have it — and if you do not, ask them how to get a copy, because that is a solvable problem.

We are happy to prepare you for those papers whether or not you study anything else with us. Exam preparation on its own is a service we run for exactly this.

CAPS through a private provider

If you want the National Senior Certificate itself and you need to be taught the work rather than simply re-examined on it, CambriLearn CAPS delivers the South African curriculum through video lessons you can replay as often as you need, with tasks and exams marked externally and the finals written through SACAI.

Realistically, this is the most demanding of the three. Seven or more subjects around a full-time job is a great deal to carry. Some adults do it and do it well. Go in with your eyes open about the workload, and read the caveats on the programme page before you commit.

The GED

For most working adults who come to us, this is the route that fits.

Four exams — English, Mathematics, Social Studies and Science — instead of seven subjects. 130 credits at NQF Level 4. SAQA has evaluated the GED and found the National Senior Certificate to be its closest comparable qualification, so employers and colleges treat it as matric-level.

The parts that matter most to an adult:

• No record of previously passed grades is required. If you left in Grade 9 in 1998 and have nothing on paper, you can still start. This single fact is why the GED works for people the other routes turn away.
• Each exam is written when you are ready for it, at accredited testing centres around the country, rather than in one fixed November. A hard month at work does not cost you a year.
• Enrolment is open all year. You can start in March.
• Exams are paid as you go. Each pretest and each of the four exams is paid when you are ready to write it, not upfront. The current figures are itemised on the GED page and the fees page.

You will need an identity document to sit the exam, and a laptop and an internet connection to do the work.

If a degree is the point, your age is an advantage

Here is the part that genuinely surprises people.

A learner who is 23 or older may apply to Universities South Africa for conditional exemption on the basis of mature age. It is a separate route with its own requirements, and it does not depend on the GED at all.

Which means an adult of 30 or 45 is often in a better position than a nineteen-year-old holding the same certificate. The route that costs a school-leaver an extra bridging year may simply be open to you already.

The other three routes to a degree — Boston City Campus directly, a Higher Certificate first, or an international online degree — are all set out in is the GED recognised in South Africa. If you are near 23, ask about mature age exemption before you spend money on anything else.

Studying around a job

This is the practical question, and it is the one that decides whether an adult finishes.

• The lessons are video-based, so they happen when you are free rather than when a class is scheduled. Early, late, on a Sunday, in a lodging house on a contract.
• The live tutoring is over Zoom, at a time arranged around your shifts. We have worked around mine rosters, farm hours and retail Decembers. Tell us the shape of your week and we will plan around it rather than pretending it is not there.
• Nothing about this requires you to be in Lydenburg. Our centre is on Church Street and you are welcome in it, but adults studying with us are spread across Mpumalanga and beyond.
• A month where nothing happens is a month, not a failure. On the self-paced programmes you pick up where you stopped.

What you need on your side is a laptop and a connection good enough for video. Where the connection is patchy, a good deal of the work can be done offline between live sessions.

The bit that is not about logistics

Most adults who phone us are not really asking whether the timetable works. They are asking whether it is ridiculous to do this now.

It is not. We have taught adults who left school in Grade 8 and now hold a qualification at the same NQF level as the matriculants they work alongside. Not one of them has told us it was too late. Several have told us they wished they had phoned a year earlier, which is a different complaint entirely.

The certificate is worth having. The bigger change, every time, is what it does to how somebody talks about themselves.

Start with a phone call

Tell us your age, the last grade you completed, whether you still have any results on paper, and what you actually need the qualification for. That is enough for us to say which of the three routes fits and roughly what it costs — and if the department can do it cheaper for you, we will point you there.

Call or WhatsApp us. Nobody here will make you feel late.