This paper focuses on the "match" between Botswana secondary school students' Piagetian status and the cognitive demands of chemistry education. The chemistry syllabus studied by the most talented students engaged in the pure sciences at the senior secondary level is cognitively well within the reach of most. However, a serious mismatch arises at the junior secondary level with regard to the sequencing of topics while the chemistry components of the double and especially single science syllabi at senior secondary school are well beyond the cognitive horizon of most students in these programmes. This represents a serious and growing dissonance in the light of the rapid expansion of access to this level of schooling.