Addressing concerns with the NSC: An analysis of first-year student performance in Mathematics and Physics

In this article we present a statistical comparison of the mid-year Mathematics and Physics results fo r students in the University of Cape Town’s engineeri ng programmes over a five year period. The particular focus is on the disaggregated group of s tudents who wrote the 2008 NSC examinations in comparison with other groups. Concerns were raised after the 2008 NSC Mathematics results showed a marked increase in high marks resulting in more s tudents meeting the engineering entrance requirements than in previous years. Scepticism abo ut the NSC Mathematics results and the related increased intake of first year students has lead to speculation about the reasons for weak mid-year Mathematics I and Physics I results. This study dra ws its empirical data from the mid-year course results for the years 2009, 2007 and 2005. The resu lts indicate that the South African matriculants wh o moved directly from school to university, show a ma rked decline in both Mathematics and Physics. However, the 2007 Mathematics results for the South African students indicate that this decline cannot only be attributed to the 2008 matriculation examin ations. The data also suggests that increasing the university entry criteria based on NSC marks may no t have a marked effect on the performance of the first year students.