Durban - Teacher union Sadtu has called for a review of the matric policy and is calling on the Department of Basic Education to allow Grade 12 pupils who fail to be allowed to return to class and repeat the year.
The union has also rejected the department’s controversial progressed pupils policy and multi-year writing of final examinations, the first of which allows pupils who have failed Grade 11 to be pushed through to Grade 12, while the multi-year matric policy allows for the writing of matric at intervals: November and June the next year.
Sadtu KZN secretary Nomarashiya Caluza said on the progression policy that Âpupils were being “walked” into Grade 12 without affording teachers and those struggling pupils additional support.
“The department has not been able to come up with a dedicated programme to assist learners cope with the demanding work of Grade 12,” she said.
Sadtu was scathing on the department’s plans to allow for struggling progressed pupils to write their matric examinations in December and June.
“To make the situation worse, the department has come up with the concept of modularisation, which in our view is the dumping of learners. Learners have never been informed in the beginning of the year that there will be this way of writing exams,” she said.
Caluza said they viewed the exercise as an attempt to “better” the matric results, because the pupils writing in June would not be counted when the Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, unveiled the pass rate in January.
Caluza said they were calling on the department to allow matric failures to repeat matric, and said they could not understand why matric was the only grade where pupils could not repeat.
“Teachers at school have to focus on those that are registered for the current year… even next year, there will never be a dedicated programme for the learners that will be completing in June.
“We are seeing the current model as a dumping ground, this is painful, it is the children of the working class that will suffer the most,” she said.
Sadtu KZN deputy secretary, Bheki Shandu, said he would like to see the department prioritise all grades, as they did with Grade 12.
“We are made to believe the only important grade is Grade 12, we cannot devote all the resources to the one grade. If we treated every grade like Grade 12, the education would improve,” he said.
Daily News