Matrics are revising with ChatGPT while one in five has no device at home
An Oxford University Press survey of pupils in four countries found South African learners leaning hardest on free AI chatbots for exam preparation, and also the most likely to have no digital device in at least one setting.
Matric candidates writing their final papers are leaning on free AI chatbots to get through revision, and the South African pupils in a four-country survey were the most likely of all to say they have no digital device to work on in at least one setting.
More than 300,000 candidates are sitting the 2026 National Senior Certificate exams, which opened on 13 October. The Department of Basic Education has scheduled the last paper of the session for 26 November 2026.
Oxford University Press put questions to pupils and teachers in South Africa, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong for a report on AI in the classroom. Two thirds of everyone surveyed, 66%, said they had used chatbots to get ready for exams. With a pass set at 40% and a place at a university or college depending on the marks, free tools that answer questions at any hour have found an obvious market.
ChatGPT and Google Gemini are free through a phone app or a browser. Meta runs assistants inside WhatsApp and Facebook, which cost less data to use. For a pupil revising on a prepaid phone, that difference matters.
The pupils in the survey described the chatbots as something to work with rather than something that works for them, a way to get an answer when a teacher is not there to give one. Many said using them to plan revision or generate ideas was fair, and that getting the software to produce the work itself defeats the exercise.
One pupil in the survey put the risk plainly: copying and pasting does not make the information stick, and that removes the point of learning it.
Teachers saw the same thing and drew a practical conclusion. One teacher told the researchers that whatever anyone thinks of AI, the pupils will be living with it, so they have to learn to handle it properly.
By the survey’s own figures the teachers are further ahead than their pupils. Of the teachers questioned, 82% used chatbots for research, 74% to build teaching resources, 66% for administrative work and 56% for marking. Just 3% said they never touch the technology in class or in their working day.
South African teachers came out as the best connected group in the study. Of those surveyed here, 91% said they had a laptop and 67% said they had a smartphone they could use for work.
That access does not reach the pupils. In South Africa, 18% of the pupils surveyed said they had no digital device available to them in at least one setting. In the UK the figure was 13%, in Brazil 4%. Every pupil surveyed in Hong Kong had a device in at least one setting.
Oxford University Press said the findings show how far digital tools have settled into ordinary teaching and learning, with substantial numbers of pupils and teachers relying on devices and platforms for routine classroom work, chatbots included. The report’s authors do not treat the technology as a replacement for conventional teaching, describing it instead as an addition to it.
Even with that gap, most South African pupils surveyed reported using digital tools regularly as they go about their schoolwork. The picture is not a classroom split between the connected and the cut off. It is a country where the same exam is being written with very different equipment on the desk.
The Department of Basic Education, whose minister Siviwe Gwarube appears in the original report, has described the NSC exams as carrying the ambitions of the country’s learners and as the route into further study, skills and the economy.
The Enquirer will keep following the 2026 exam session, including what schools and the department do about pupils who reach the final papers without a device of their own.
