You did not pass matric. Here are the routes, in the order we would consider them.

The results come out in January and the phone starts ringing. Sometimes it is the student. More often it is a parent who has been awake since five and has not yet worked out how to say it out loud.

So, plainly: not passing matric ends nothing. It costs time and it costs money, and how much of each depends heavily on which road you take — which is why the decision is worth an afternoon rather than a signature on the first thing advertised.

Here are the roads, in the order we would look at them.

First, get the statement of results in front of you

Before anything else, answer three questions from the actual document.

1. 1How many subjects failed, and by how much? One subject short by a handful of marks is a completely different situation from four subjects failed badly.
2. 2Which result was achieved overall? A bachelor's pass, a diploma pass, a higher certificate pass and a fail are four different outcomes, and only the first opens a university degree directly.
3. 3How old is the candidate now? Age changes what is available, particularly past 21 and past 23.

A surprising number of families make this decision without the statement in front of them, on the strength of a phone call from a friend. Please do not.

Route one: rewrite through the department

If you are close, this is almost always the right answer, and it is the cheapest by a wide margin.

The Department of Basic Education runs the route for candidates who need to rewrite, and has run second-chance programmes for exactly this situation. You remain a National Senior Certificate candidate, you rewrite what you failed rather than repeating what you passed, and at the end you hold the same certificate as everybody else, with nothing to explain afterwards.

We are not the department, and the requirements and dates move, so do not take our word for the current rules. Phone your district office or check with the department directly, and do it early, because registration closes a long way ahead of the exams.

What we can do is prepare a student for those papers. Exam preparation on its own is a normal thing to ask us for. You do not have to enrol in a programme, move anything, or change anything else. A good number of our students use us only for the last stretch.

Route two: redo the subjects on CAPS, privately

If the departmental route has closed for the year, or the gaps are wide enough that rewriting cold is unrealistic, the same curriculum can be done through a private provider with proper teaching behind it.

On CambriLearn CAPS the curriculum is the South African one, the lessons are video-based and can be replayed as often as needed, tasks and exams are marked externally, and the finals are written through SACAI. What you hold at the end is the National Senior Certificate — the identical qualification written in schools.

Two honest warnings. The SACAI examination calendar does not bend, so a student who is ready in June still waits for the sitting. And examination fees in the final year are extra, passed on to you at cost with nothing added.

This route suits a student who genuinely needs to be re-taught rather than merely re-examined.

Route three: the GED

For some students the honest position is that they are nineteen, they have had enough of school, and the prospect of another year of seven subjects is the thing standing between them and doing anything at all.

The GED is four exams — English, Mathematics, Social Studies and Science — instead of seven subjects. It carries 130 credits at NQF Level 4. SAQA has evaluated it and found the National Senior Certificate to be its closest comparable qualification, so employers and colleges treat it as matric-level. No record of previously passed grades is needed to start, which matters a great deal when the last statement of results is painful to look at. Each exam is written the moment the student is ready for it rather than in a fixed November.

And here is the catch, which you should hear from us rather than discover later: on its own the GED does not carry matric exemption, so it will not by itself open a bachelor's degree at a public South African university. There are four working routes past that — Boston City Campus directly, a Higher Certificate first, mature age exemption from 23, or studying internationally online — and all four are written out in is the GED recognised in South Africa. Read it before you choose this route.

Route four: you passed, but not well enough for what you want

A different problem with the same feeling, and it gets missed.

A diploma pass or a higher certificate pass is a National Senior Certificate. You have matric. What you do not have is direct entry to a bachelor's degree.

The standard way through is a Higher Certificate at Level 5 of the National Qualifications Framework worth at least 120 credits — one year full-time, offered by a wide range of public and private institutions — after which you can apply to Universities South Africa for complete exemption, and then apply to any university subject to that faculty's own requirements. Budget in the region of R15 000 to R35 000 for the year, plus the Matriculation Board endorsement fee, which is paid separately.

It is the same bridge our GED students use, and a great many South Africans cross it every year. One extra year is not a lost year when the alternative is not going at all.

What we would actually say on the phone

• Failed one or two subjects, and not by much. Rewrite through the department. Come to us for exam preparation if you want somebody in your corner for it, and spend nothing more than that.
• Failed several subjects, and the teaching was the problem. CAPS through CambriLearn, properly taught, finals through SACAI.
• Eighteen or older, finished with school, needs a qualification to get moving. The GED, with the exemption question settled upfront rather than later.
• Passed with a diploma or higher certificate pass, and wants a degree. Higher Certificate first, then exemption.
• Already twenty-three or older. Ask about mature age exemption before enrolling in anything at all. It may cost you nothing.

Every student who has come through here was capable. Most of them had simply been measured on one bad November.

Phone us

Tell us the age, what the statement of results says, and what the student actually wants to do next. We will tell you which of these four we would choose and why — including when the answer is the department rather than us.

Get in touch. It costs nothing to ask.