Results are sharply up this year. That improvement, though, has not stopped teachers and observers from questioning what students are actually learning in the country’s schools.
The 2026 baccalaureat results in the Comoros, announced on August 4, marked a clear break from previous years. According to figures from the National Office of Examinations and Competitions (ONEC), 4,312 candidates passed outright in the first group, out of 11,119 registered across the Union, a pass rate of 31.8 percent. Another 2,901 candidates, or 26.1 percent, qualified to sit the second group of exams, which began the following Saturday. The contrast with recent sessions is stark. In 2025, the first group pass rate hit a historic low, with only 2,360 students passing out of more than 13,000 candidates, working out to 17.80 percent in Ngazidja, 18.91 percent in Ndzuwani and 13.39 percent in Mwali. In 2024, the pass rate hovered around 25 percent. And in 2023, close to 70 percent of candidates failed outright, a session that hardened criticism of the country’s education system.
This year, Mwali posted the best results: 709 candidates passed out of 1,560 registered, a 46 percent pass rate. Adding the 467 candidates who qualified for the second group, the island’s overall potential pass rate reaches 76.61 percent. In Ndzuwani, 1,332 candidates out of 5,463 passed the first group, or 24.38 percent, while more than half the island’s candidates, 53.96 percent, remain deferred for now. The improvement has brought some hope to a system often criticized for its weak performance, but the challenge is far from over. Nearly two thirds of candidates still have not secured their diploma after the first group of exams.
Beyond the raw figures, the real question fueling debate is the actual level of students. For several years, the unified Comorian baccalaureat has carried a difficult reputation: failure rates near 70 percent across multiple sessions, recurring teacher strikes that disrupt the school calendar, and a system widely seen as needing deep reform. Some observers regularly go as far as suggesting the exam should simply be scrapped, given how much its credibility has suffered.
A report published ahead of the 2026 session summed up this recurring pattern well. Every year, debate centers on pass rates, records and failures, with some pointing to weak results and others worried more broadly about students’ general level. Beyond that repeated observation, several voices in the sector say the real urgency is putting structural reforms in place to rebuild public schooling for the long term. The explanations offered year after year tend to be the same: not enough trained teachers, recurring strikes that eat into teaching time, and a public education system modeled on the French curriculum but working with limited resources. Some analyses suggest a child born in the Comoros only reaches a fraction of their academic potential because of these structural gaps.
This year again, the national exam calendar had to be reshuffled because of strikes during the school year, cutting further into students’ preparation time before final exams.
The conversation around the results now goes well beyond the announcement itself. The number of Comorian baccalaureat holders keeps rising year after year, but that growth raises a harder question: what does it actually reflect in terms of skills gained. For many teachers and education observers, the goal can no longer just be getting more students through the exam. It has to be making sure the diploma still means real readiness for higher education, including at the University of the Comoros, whose capacity and teaching resources remain limited as well.
While final results for the second group are still pending, the 2026 session confirms a rising pass rate trend, without settling the now long running debate over the real quality of education in the Comoros.