Matric results season has become a ritual in South Africa’s public life. The numbers are announced; celebrations ensue, and bold statements proclaiming progress soon dominate the conversation. This year is no different. With an 88% pass rate, the highest on record, and more than 650 000 learners passing, the results have been framed by President Cyril Ramaphosa as evidence that education reforms are bearing fruit and that the system is progressing towards greater equity.
At one level, this optimism is understandable. The results are worth celebrating. But celebration can also obscure as much as it reveals. While pass rates rise, access to meaningful science education is narrow in ways that quietly reproduce inequality.
To his credit, the president acknowledged one uncomfortable statistic. Of the 1.2 million children who entered grade one in 2014, only 778 000 reached Grade 12 in 2025. Nearly half a million learners disappeared somewhere along the schooling journey. The large number of dropouts reflects the cumulative weight of inequality.
However, a second, quieter culling takes place inside the schooling system itself, particularly in mathematics and physical sciences.
Culling from mathematics and physical sciences
As learners move through Grades 9 to 11, many are steered away from subjects seen as too risky to pass. Schools under pressure to maintain high overall pass rates often encourage learners to replace mathematics, life sciences or physical sciences with subjects perceived as easier to pass, such as tourism or business studies. Between 2023 and 2024, mathematics enrolments dropped by more than 12 000 learners. Physical sciences enrolments fell by nearly 7 000 over the same period.
These are not marginal fluctuations. They represent thousands of learners exiting gateway subjects before the final exam is even written.
This redirection is rarely described as exclusion. It is framed as guidance, as helping learners make “realistic” subject choices. In practice, it functions as a system-level strategy to protect pass rates. For learners in under-resourced schools, this is often the only pragmatic option. There are no laboratories, no functional equipment, and no specialist teachers. And by grade 10 most of these students lack the cognitive foundations to successfully tackle physical science and mathematics at matric level. Repeated failure makes persistence feel futile.
In other words, the system is not only struggling to improve performance. It is managing the pass rate by steadily narrowing who is allowed to participate in science and mathematics.
The argument has never been that every learner should pursue science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers at university. Differentiated pathways are both necessary and desirable. Economies need artisans, technicians, teachers, caregivers, entrepreneurs, artists and tradespeople alongside engineers and scientists.
At its core, this is an argument about opportunity.
In a fair system, learners should leave STEM subjects because of informed choice, interest and aptitude. Not because their schools lack laboratories, qualified teachers or basic learning resources or because they lack adequate foundational cognition to handle science and mathematics.
The contrast between school contexts makes this pattern difficult to ignore. In the under-resourced township and rural schools, subject exit is often a rational response to multiple barriers. In former model C and some private schools, the picture is markedly different. Laboratories function. Classes are smaller. Subject specialists are available. Learners are far more likely to remain in mathematics and physical sciences classes through matric, even when they struggle initially. Unsurprisingly, distinctions cluster in these schools. Over time, studying science and mathematics has become elitist.
The result is a system that does not merely reflect inequality but actively reproduces it. The South African schooling system is not just producing too few STEM graduates. It is deciding earlier and unevenly who gains access to the knowledge base from which high-value careers and influence emerge. In South Africa, subject choice is too often shaped by institutional constraints rather than learner potential. What is presented as choice is frequently a response to structural limitation.
Seriousness delayed is opportunity denied
When declining performance in mathematics and science is acknowledged, it is often explained as a problem of weak foundations in the early grades. This admission is important. To describe the problem as foundational is to concede that the system faces serious difficulty. But it also exposes a contradiction. If constraints are structural and embedded at the level of foundations, it becomes difficult to speak credibly of ‘steady progress’. Unless that progress directly confronts those constraints. Improvements that leave foundational weakness intact are likely to be cosmetic.
The problem is not that urgency arrives in matric, but that it arrives there for the first time. In subjects such as mathematics and physical sciences, seriousness delayed is opportunity denied, and no amount of late-stage intervention can fully recover what should have been built steadily from the foundation phase.
International evidence consistently shows that exposure to mathematics and science expands future options, even for those learners who ultimately choose non-STEM careers. Scientific literacy strengthens problem solving, civic reasoning, health decision making, and adaptability in a technology-driven economy. Closing off access to these subjects does not merely limit career options, it also narrows intellectual horizons.
Countries that expand opportunities for learners do so by ensuring that access to scientific knowledge is broad, well-resourced and sustained long enough for genuine choices to emerge. South Africa’s current trajectory points in the opposite direction: rising pass rates alongside shrinking access to science.
Progress in education should be welcome. And the commitment of teachers and learners acknowledged. But rising pass rates do not, on their own, settle the question of equity. A system can improve its headline outcomes while quietly narrowing access to opportunity. If reform is to be meaningful, success must be judged not only by how many learners pass, but by whether genuine educational pathways and opportunities remain open to all.