Durban - Preparations to collect, store and mark this year's matric results have been finalised, as the Class of 2014 are busy hitting the books.
With just 34 days to go to the first paper, the 688 660 candidates - 150 000 of them in KwaZulu-Natal - who have registered to sit their final school exams, are making the most of the time.
Angie Motshekga, Basic Education Minister, said on Sunday final preparations had been made to collect the 7 million answer scripts on the days the exams would be written.
They would then be placed in storage and moved to 117 marking centres across the country waiting to be marked by a selected team of 41 564 markers who would get down to business on December 1.
Last year, the KZN Department of Education had to recall all marker appointment letters after a “system error” which led to the appointment of the wrong teachers.
“We are 100 percent clean and confident with regards to the appointment of markers this year,” said Muzi Mahlambi, the spokesman for the KZN Department of Education last night.
Speaking at a Council of Education Ministers meeting - representing all nine education MECs and the basic education ministry - Motshekga said that 550 127 of the 688 660 candidates registered for this year’s matric were full-time.
The department and the nine provinces would “strengthen its monitoring” to ensure that the integrity and credibility of the exam were upheld at every centre, she said.
The MECs’ meeting “strongly condemned” recent community protests which had a negative impact on education in those areas.
Motshekga also said that for the curriculum to be effectively delivered to pupils, teachers had to be profiled to ensure the correct teacher was teaching the correct subject.
Some 75 percent of teachers had already been profiled.
The pilot for the incremental introduction of African languages was also under way in Grade 1 classes, she said. Out of 25 000 schools in the system, 3 700 did not offer an African language. Zulu would be introduced as a third language into at least 700 schools in KZN next year.
Determined to improve its matric marks, the KZN Department of Education - the largest in the country with 24 percent of all schools in the country, 25 percent of all pupils and 24.5 percent of all teachers - has organised dedicated matric support and intervention programmes, targeting 41 281 pupils from schools that had achieved below 75 percent in last year’s exams.
Costing R20 million, the intervention opened with the winter school holiday programme and will continue during next month’s spring holidays.
On top of that, districts will be implementing their own intervention programmes for schools that are not part of the targeted group.
When the results were initially announced, the pass rate was 77.4 percent, but when the later supplementary exam results were added, the provincial performance increased to 80.5 percent. Now, the aim is to notch up an 85 percent pass rate.
Daily News