Cape Town – The National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa) says it is concerned about the readiness of matric learners, who commenced writing their final exams on Monday.
Speaking to Newzroom Afrika, Naptosa executive director Basil Manuel says the 2022 cohort has had a tough three years due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We are concerned not about the general group of learners, our exams are primarily academic exams and the large cohort of those learners are not academic.
“For them the stress and strain of trying to catch up when in fact a normal year’s work was too much. We are worried about them, their substantial cohort and then the other children as well who always battle with the exams.
“We are worried about the mental health of these kids because given the pressure that they have been under in this year and the pressure of the exams, and the load shedding which we mustn’t downplay,” he said.
Manuel said that the learners he is referring to are the ones who have to push to the very last minute and not all learners are as resilient as the next, with many children battling with coping with the stresses and strains of matric.
He said the impact on the educators themselves showing concerns and not confident in terms of readiness which also has a massive impact on learners.
Manuel said, “Our teachers have been telling us what a tough year it has been, they raised concerns when the trial exam results didn’t look so good after after all the work that had been done.
“And once again there are people who have spent every weekend and the holidays trying to simply ensure that their children are ready for the exams, which has put tremendous strain on them.
“We must thank our teachers for sacrifices but we must also assist because many of them are buckling under the pressure of all that they have to do, everybody looks at the teacher and you have failed too if your children have failed,” Manuel said.
He said the idea that schools needed to procure alternative lighting equipment and generators for exam centres was not sustainable.
“The vast majority of our schools are in quintile 1, which means they don’t have an income of their own and they get a paper allocation, they can’t go out and purchase generators, and including the cost of fuel.
“We need to start a dedicated programme of utilising the resources that are easy to acquire like solar energy for our schools, and new schools must automatically be equipped for that because this problem of load shedding is not going to disappear. And to have a generator that might be stolen will set school back,” Manuel said.
IOL