Poor pass rates of matric learners at secondary schools in South Africa has been a concern for
quite some time. Despite large government spending on education, research has shown that the
South African schooling system is struggling to convert resources to student performances and
failing to promote social equity. The poor performance by South African students prompts further
investigation into the factors contributing to educational outputs. The focus of this case study in
Cape Town is twofold, firstly to determine if there are any spatial patterns among the matric pass
rates of secondary schools and secondly to determine if there are any relationships between the
matric pass rate of the school and the socio-economic attributes of the school feeder areas. Key
findings of this research suggest that Cape Town schools are clustered in terms of school
performance with high performing schools grouped together and many low performing schools also
clustered together. There were a few exceptions where within a cluster of low performing schools
there was one high performing school and vice versa. Outcomes of the research into spatially
varying relationships point to selected socio-economic factors of the community, particularly
parent and household characteristics, influencing the learner’s school performance.