A key contributor to South Africa’s unemployment crisis has been the quality of public education. It’s far from the only problem, and improvements to basic education can only do so much when the government has failed to invest in higher education. The question remains: what is the value of a matric, particularly a bachelor pass?
A previous post examined the broad trends in the 2024 National Senior Certificate matric results. While record numbers of learners passed matric and achieved bachelor passes, are they equipped for higher education and the job market? This post looks at the mathematics and physical science results in detail to answer that question.
The academic evidence is already grim: over half of university students drop out in the first year and there is a clear gap between learners’ results and the minimum entry requirements for engineering. Most universities require a minimum of 60% in the two subjects.
The higher a learner’s marks, the more likely they are to succeed in higher education, and there is research to support this. Very few learners are outstanding in mathematics and science and there is a very narrow funnel for excellence in basic education.
Of the learners who entered Grade 1 in 2013, less than one in 100 achieved a distinction in mathematics – and less than one in 200 achieved a distinction in physical science. This small pool of excellence is the source of our future doctors, engineers and scientists. There were fewer mathematics distinctions in 2024 than 2018.
Mathematics
Almost a third of learners who wrote mathematics failed the subject: of the 235,703 learners writing, 74,227 achieved less than 30%. Most of the students who passed scored under 50% and very few achieved a distinction.
The graph below shows the distribution of mathematics results by province, by the number of learners. The most common mark is between 30% and 40%, with the numbers tailing off on either side of the range.

In most provinces, the vast majority of learners scored under 50% for mathematics and very few achieved a distinction (over 80%). The graph below shows the distribution of results by the percentage of learners who scored below 50%, between 50% and 80%, and above 80%.

Only the Western Cape and Gauteng significantly outperformed the national average: 56% of Western Cape learners and 64% of Gauteng learners achieved less than 50% for mathematics, compared with the national average of 70%.
The two provinces also had more distinctions per learner: only 3.9% of all learners achieved more than 80% for mathematics, compared with 5.4% for Gauteng and an impressive 9.3% for the Western Cape.
Physical science
There were similar trends for physical science. The most common mark was between 30% and 40%. While the failure rate was better than for mathematics (24% compared with 31%) there were almost 40,000 fewer learners taking the subject.

More than 70% of learners writing physical science scored less than 50% for the subject. Only 3% achieved a distinction.

Mapping the results by school
The maps below show the mathematics and physical science results by school for the Gauteng province (and the Khutsong region in the North West, which was formerly part of the province). The schools are coloured by the average mark for the subject, which in many cases is very low. Links to the interactive maps are provided so you can explore the maps and access a detailed breakdown of mathematics and physical science results by school.


The public education system is producing about 10,000 matriculants a year who will be our future professionals. We have a deficit of engineers alone that is three or four times that, and local government has shed hundreds of engineers over the past 20 years. Engineering is just one sector where basic education isn’t meeting the needs of our economy.
The debate over quality in basic education might seem moot when so many other government failures are affecting the labour market, chief among them our growing national debt and the related government austerity that has placed so many public sector jobs in jeopardy. It is not.
If National Treasury manages to turn the corner and bring our public deficit under control, we will still struggle with mismatched skills and matriculants who are completely unprepared for the next stage of their professional development.
The former minister of basic education did improve matric outcomes, up to a point. It’s now time for the department to improve education outcomes in the lower grades so that future Grade 12s can breast the tape when they cross the finish line of basic education, instead of crawling across it.
This story is published courtesy of The South Africa Brief, a collaboration between SABI Strategy Group and Hlaziya Solutions that provides a comprehensive guide on what to expect and how to interpret daily and weekly developments in this new era in South African politics..
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