In a speech made shortly after his release from prison in 1990 Nelson Mandela stated that: "Apartheid education is inferior and a crime against humanity." As Christine Qunta recently reminded us, in the "1991 matriculation examination, only 41% of African pupils passed and only 11% obtained matriculation exemptions as compared to 95% of white pupils who passed and 42% who gained matriculation exemption." Sixteen years on it is interesting and important to compare the racial breakdowns of the matric results of 1991 with those of 2006. As education for black South Africans under apartheid was so bad, how much better is it now?

There are no racial statistics for the matric results between 1995 and 2002. The racial classification of pupils writing matric was only re-introduced under the then Minister of Education, Kader Asmal, in 2003. These statistics are not particularly reliable as they rely on candidates self-classifying themselves: some refuse, while others tick the incorrect box. In some cases, apparently, headmasters told their whole matriculation class to enter the wrong racial designation. There is also no racial breakdown available for pupils writing the Independent Examination Board exam. Nonetheless, although they should be treated with due caution, they do provide a rough indication of the progress, or lack thereof, in matric pass rates by race since the ANC took power.

442 800 Black pupils wrote matric in 2006 as compared to 304 315 in 1991. The pass rate for black pupils - which is not a reliable measure, for reasons discussed yesterday - has increased to 62%. However, the matric exemption rate, at 11.6%, is little better than it was in 1991. And it is still much lower than the 16% it was in the mid-to-late 1980s. Meanwhile, the total number of white pupils writing the government matric has dropped from 65 933 in 1991 to 42 483 last year, with the matric exemption rate increasing to 52% due clearly to a softening of assessment standards. The number of Indian candidates has also dropped - from 14 248 in 1991 to 10165 last year - but the exemption rate has also increased, from 49% to 55%. The number of Coloured pupils writing matric has increased from 22 405 in 1991 to 34 417 in 2006. However, unlike the other two minority groups, their exemption rate has declined - from 22% in 1991 to 17%.

Under apartheid there were wide divergences in the pass and exemption rates in the Department of Education and Training (DET) schools, as well as in the homelands. There are also substantial differences at provincial level today.

There were centres of excellence in the Homeland education system. In 1991 of the 22 433 candidates who wrote matric in Bophuthatswana, 14 700 passed (66%), and 5413 passed with exemption (24%). By contrast, of the 35 785 black pupils who wrote matric in the North West province last year only 22 270 (64%) passed and only 4138 (12%) passed with exemption.

The worst pass rates of 1991 were to be found in the townships of Johannesburg and the Highveld. The overall pass rate in these areas was 34.3% and the matric exemption rate was 7.5%. These low pass rates were due mainly to political disturbances, with most school days being lost to boycotts and teacher strikes. There has been something of a recovery in Gauteng since then. Last year the pass rate for black pupils was 76.3%, with 13.3% passing with endorsement. Last year the Free State had the highest matric exemption rate for black pupils (15.3%) while the Eastern Cape had by far the lowest (7.3%).

The problem with black schooling under apartheid was not just the low percentage of exemptions, but the poor quality of even those passes. Very few students passed higher grade mathematics. In 1990 the Minister of Education was asked how many pupils at schools falling under the control of the DET (i.e. excluding the homelands) had written and passed mathematics at higher grade. The answer: 5 672 pupils had written the exam but only 906 had passed. Of these 12 had received A's, 34 B's, 129 C's, and 252 D's. In answer to another parliamentary question the Minister revealed that in the 1991 matric of the 29 729 pupils who passed the DET exam with exemption, 20 had passed with A aggregates, 207 with B aggregates, 1 656 with C aggregates, and 12 470 with D aggregates.

Last year 1 172 black pupils passed the government matric with distinction. Moreover, 10 256 black pupils passed higher grade mathematics, with 3 338 passing with an A, B, or C grade. Although this meant that only 2.3% of the black pupils who wrote the 2006 exam passed maths at higher grade - and only 0.8% with an A, B, or C - in absolute terms there seems to have been progress since 1991. Gauteng (4.0%) and the Western Cape (3.8%) had the highest percentage of black pupils passing maths at this level, due probably to the greater accessibility of former Model C schools in these provinces. In the Eastern Cape however only 1.6% of black pupils passed higher grade maths, while in Kwa-Zulu Natal the figure was 1.8%. By contrast, 23.5% of Indian pupils and 24.7% of White pupils who wrote the government matric, and 41.2% of pupils who wrote the IEB version, passed higher grade maths.

On the assumption that one can make comparisons between the results of then and now, what can one conclude from all this? While clearly many black pupils have been able to take advantage of relatively high quality education in the former Model C schools overall there has been little improvement in the quality of black education, as measured by the matric exemption rate and the percentage of pupils passing with higher grade mathematics. Indeed, it is possible that if one excluded the black pupils in the formerly non-black schools, one would find that the exemption rates in the townships and former homeland areas are worse than they were under apartheid. Just as notably, the steady improvement in the quality of Coloured education through the 1980s and early 1990s has been reversed under the ANC, with the percentage of Coloured pupils passing with exemption dropping by over a fifth since the early 1990s.

What is certain, is that the quality of black (and Coloured) education is nowhere near what it should have been. After 1994 spending on pupils was fully equalised, the political disruption of schooling ended, and schools integrated. Most of the obstacles to improving school education had been removed, all that was needed were the right policies and good administrators. The ANC cannot really blame anyone else for this failure. Not only has it determined policy since 1994, but its activists took over the running of the Education department shortly thereafter, and the largest teaching union - SADTU - is aligned to the ruling party.