Grade 12 Life Sciences Past Papers and Memos

The topics, the marks and the time you get, from the Department of Basic Education's examination guidelines for Life Sciences. Know this before you sit down with a paper and you will know what a good mark should feel like.

A ± means it is the weighting the examiners work towards rather than a fixed part of the paper, so a sitting lands a few marks either side of it.

Paper 1

150 marks, 2½ hours

Responding to the environment (humans): ±54 marks
Human reproduction: ±41 marks
Endocrine system and homeostasis (humans): ±34 marks
Responding to the environment (plants): ±13 marks
Reproduction in vertebrates: ±8 marks

Section A is 50 marks of short answer questions. Section B is two longer questions of 50 marks each.

Paper 2

150 marks, 2½ hours

Evolution: ±54 marks
Genetics and inheritance: ±48 marks
DNA: the code of life: ±27 marks
Meiosis: ±21 marks

Section A is 50 marks of short answer questions. Section B is two longer questions of 50 marks each.

How hard is Grade 12 Life Sciences?

Out of every 10 learners who wrote Life Sciences, about 6 got 40% or more.

382 379 learners wrote Life Sciences in 2025. 4 of the 9 subjects on this site are passed more often than this one.

Use that when you mark your own paper. Under 30% is a fail. 30% to 39% is a pass, but it shuts you out of most courses after school. 40% and up means you did better than about half the country.

National Life Sciences results, 2021 to 2025
Year	Wrote the exam	Got 30% or more	Got 40% or more
2025	382 379	83.4%	63.8%
2024	374 722	80.8%	61.2%
2023	379 024	75.6%	52.3%
2022	399 007	71.5%	49%
2021	384 216	71.5%	51.3%

National results for the October and November papers, from the Department of Basic Education's 2025 NSC Diagnostic Report.

All Grade 12 subjects When each paper is written

Grade 12 Life Sciences past paper questions

Where can I download Grade 12 Life Sciences past papers and memos?

On this page. There are 181 Grade 12 Life Sciences past papers here, from 2014 to 2026, and they come with their memos. Some people call them exam papers or previous question papers. They are the same thing. Every one is a free PDF and none of them ask you to sign up.

Are the Grade 12 Life Sciences trial or prelim papers here?

Yes. Look under September in each year. The September papers are the trial exams. Some schools call them prelims and some call them preparatory exams. Each province sets its own, so you can practise on more than one.

Do the papers come with memos?

Yes. The memo, which is the marking guideline the examiners use, sits on the same row as the paper it belongs to, so you download the two together rather than hunting for them separately.

Which provinces are these Life Sciences papers from?

The Department of Basic Education, the Eastern Cape, the Free State, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, North West, the Northern Cape and the Western Cape. Every paper here was set by an education department. Some departments put their papers online, and we take those from the department. Others do not, so we find their papers elsewhere and check each one against its cover before we add it. If you cannot find your province, a national paper is set to the same CAPS curriculum and is just as good to practise on.

What topics are in Grade 12 Life Sciences Paper 1?

Paper 1 is out of 150 marks and you get 2½ hours to write it. It covers 5 areas: Responding to the environment (humans); Human reproduction; Endocrine system and homeostasis (humans); Responding to the environment (plants); Reproduction in vertebrates. The marks for each one are set out above.

Which term are these Life Sciences papers from?

Every term the department published one for. Term 4 is the November exams, Term 3 is the September exams, Term 2 is the May/June exams, Term 1 is the Feb/March exams. Each paper in the list is labelled both ways, so it does not matter whether your school talks in terms or in months.

Are these IEB papers?

No. These are NSC papers, set by the Department of Basic Education and the provinces for the government curriculum, CAPS. If you are at an IEB school the content overlaps a great deal, but the papers are set separately and are not on this page.

Which paper should I start with?

The newest one. Start with 2026 and work backwards. The examiners who set the most recent papers are the ones setting yours, and how they word a question matters as much as what it is about.

Verified against DBE and provincial education department papers

Published 16 Apr 2026 · Updated 06 Oct 2026 by NavyBlue Editorial Team

Had enough for now? Try today's puzzle.

Today's puzzle pulls from Life Sciences and everything else you have covered. Four tries, about two minutes, and one group is always a trick.

Play the Grade 12 puzzle