Cape Town - Some Cape Town matric candidates arrived at their exam venue late and in tears on Monday after an accident on the N1 caused a huge snarl-up – some got out of their parents’ cars and walked to school.
Most of the Western Cape’s candidates wrote their first paper, English, on Monday and were scheduled to start writing at 9am, but the accident at the Durban Road bridge resulted in the freeway lanes into Cape Town being closed.
Joh Dorfling, principal of DF Malan High School in Bellville, said that by 9am, 30 of the school’s matric candidates had not turned up.
She said some candidates had even got out of their parents’ cars and walked to school as traffic was at a standstill. She couldn’t say how far the pupils had walked.
“It wasn’t a good start to the exams, but luckily all candidates had arrived by 10am.”
According to the Western Cape Education Department, candidates who arrived more than an hour late for an exam would not be allowed to write the exam and would have to write the supplementary exam next year.
More than 30 000 full-time candidates were scheduled to write Monday’s English first additional language exam and 18 790 candidates the English home language exam.
Western Cape Education MEC Debbie Schäfer, who visited Belgravia High School in Athlone on Monday, said she hoped that the class of 2014 would improve on last year’s record number of passes.
Last year 40 558 passes were achieved and the target this year would be 43 000.
Almost all of the 108 candidates at the school gave her a thumbs-up when she asked how their first exam went.
Nathan Daniels said the comprehension test was the most challenging part of the paper but otherwise “it was not bad”.
Yusrah Adul-Aleem said the paper was “better than expected”.
She said history was the exam she was most nervous about.
Taariq Adbullah also didn’t find the paper too difficult although the section on using language correctly was a challenge, while Waheedah Harris said candidates who had worked hard would have had no problems.
The visual arts exam was also written on Monday. Accounting and the first papers in Xhosa were scheduled to be written today.
The accident involved two taxis and four cars at the intersection of Duinefontein Road and Govan Mbeki Avenue.
The accident happened at 5.40am at the Durban Road bridge in the incoming lanes towards the city centre, said city traffic spokesman Richard Coleman.
A truck appeared to have jack-knifed and another truck and a car smashed into it. All lanes into town were closed and hard-pressed traffic officers had to direct peak hour traffic on to an already inundated Durban Road. Two slight injuries were reported, Coleman said.
The road was reopened at about 8.40am.
The accident forced traffic officials to shut one lane of Duinefontein Road from 6.50am to 7.30am, Coleman said.
Cape Argus