Matrics set to rewrite after power cut

Cape Town 141020- Taariq Ebrahim, Taa-ibah Jackson, Faradeebah Jumat and Abduraghmaan Dollie speaking about the Computer paper they just wrote. Thousands of matric candidates across the province started their 2014 final exams today.Trafalgar high school learners were among the candidates writing the computer applications technology exam. Picture Cindy waxa.Reportrer Ilse

Cape Town 141020- Taariq Ebrahim, Taa-ibah Jackson, Faradeebah Jumat and Abduraghmaan Dollie speaking about the Computer paper they just wrote. Thousands of matric candidates across the province started their 2014 final exams today.Trafalgar high school learners were among the candidates writing the computer applications technology exam. Picture Cindy waxa.Reportrer Ilse

Published Oct 21, 2014

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Cape Town - The first day of the 2014 matric exams got off to a bad start for candidates at an Mfuleni school after their area was hit by a power failure, resulting in them having to now write a back-up paper.

Manzomthombo Secondary principal John Matiso said the 22 candidates, who were writing the computer applications technology practical, were two hours into the three-hour exam when the power went out.

According to the Western Cape Education Department, candidates have to remain in the computer laboratory until the power has been restored.

However, if the power has not been restored after two hours, as was the case at Manzomthombo, the exam has to be rescheduled in consultation with the department’s directorate for exam administration.

Jessica Shelver, spokeswoman for Education MEC Debbie Schäfer, said the candidates would write a back-up paper at a later stage.

“Eskom have said that there was a fault on the line and that is was not a planned outage.”

Matiso said the power failure “was unfortunate” and the 22 pupils had been disturbed by it.

“It was beyond everybody’s control.”

More than 8 000 Western Cape candidates were scheduled to write Monday’s paper.

Candidates at Trafalgar High School in the city centre, who spoke to the Cape Argus after the exam, said it had been quite challenging but they believed they had passed.

Abduraghmaan Dollie said the paper had been “tough and stressful” but also fair.

Getting everything done on time was challenging.

Taa-ibah Jackson said some of the questions “were a bit tricky” and had to be read carefully.

Faradeebah Jumat said she had been nervous before the start of the exam but had more than enough time to complete everything.

Taariq Ebrahim said there were easy questions and difficult ones “and the ones that were hard were very hard”.

More than 900 candidates were expected to write Tuesday’s information technology exam.

Meanwhile, matric candidates registered with the Independent Examinations Board (IEB) were scheduled to start writing their final exams on Tuesday.

IEB chief executive Anne Oberholzer said the IEB had introduced an electronic locking system for examination material.

“With this system, the IEB controls the date and time at which the bags containing examination material may be opened at an examination centre as well as the time by which answer scripts must be packed away and locked. If the material is not locked away by that specified time, the IEB is alerted and a follow-up can be done immediately.”

A total of 726 Western Cape candidates have been registered for the IEB exams.

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