It’s well-known that when it comes to science and maths, South Africa’s performance at school level is among the worst in the world.

So when it was announced last week that 2017’s matric results in these two fields had improved, many were elated.

But, alas, the truth of the matter doesn’t paint as pretty a picture.

You see, on the face of it, the results show that “both the mathematics and physical sciences scores improved, with 51.9% and 65.2% of learners passing the subject – achieving more than 30% – up from 51.1% and 52.3% in 2016,” reports Business Tech.

However, this is not really the case, because both subjects had fewer learners actually writing the exams.

Awks – here’s more:

About 75,000 fewer matrics wrote the exams in 2017 than in 2016, but the number of registrations for the exams was only down by 25,000 or so candidates, showing a large drop-off between registration and writing.

This drop-off led to over 20,000 fewer learners penning the maths exams in 2017, and over 13,000 fewer sitting for physical sciences.

While the two key subjects for any engineering or IT-related degree are mathematics and natural sciences, only 6 726 of the 245 103 learners who wrote maths passed with the 80% needed.

Then:

16,656 passed with more than 70%, which is enough to guarantee entry into computer science courses – however, in both cases this represents only 2.7% (engineering) and 6.8% (computer science) of all candidates.

This is down from the 3.0% of students who achieved 80% or more in 2016 for maths, and down from the 8.9% who achieved higher than 70% for physical sciences the same year.

While 51.9% and 65.2% of matrics passed maths and science, respectively, even fewer who passed with high enough marks to enter the engineering or computer science fields.

Here’s a nifty graph to help you soak in that information:

[source:businesstech]