Durban - The close to 50000 pupils who failed the matric examinations last year have been encouraged to “soldier on and try again” through the Second Chance Programme.
The provincial Department of Education said it was all systems go for the revision lessons designed to help matric pupils who failed.
According to the department, the co-ordinators of the Second Chance Programme have been appointed in all of KwaZulu-Natal’s nine education districts.
A total of 49618 pupils in KZN failed the exams out of 147646 pupils that wrote the National Senior Certificate examination. Mthandeni Dlungwana, Education MEC, recently described the number of failed pupils as “alarmingly too high” and “worrying”.
The Second Chance Programme, he said, would afford the failed pupils an opportunity to re-write the subjects they had failed and better their results.
“We call on all of them to soldier on and try again. Opportunities are made available for them to re-write subjects they failed. As a department, we need to ensure that pupils benefit to the maximum from the Second Chance Programme,” the MEC said.
This programme would mainly consist of pupils pupils from the 215 schools that achieved a 30% pass rate and below as well as the nine schools that had a zero pass rate in the province.
Although the number decreased from 2015, Dlungwana said the number of pupils who had failed was concerning.
“Drastic measures need to be taken to move all these schools up to 50% and above,” he said. The programme was divided into three phases:
* phase one would prepare pupils who qualify to write the National Senior Certificate supplementary exams in February / March this year;
* phase two would provide assistance in the form of revision to pupils who wrote the modularised exams last year and would write the balance of the subjects in May / June this year as part of the department’s policy of progressed pupils.
* phase three would be for pupils who failed the overall exams last year, but would be given an opportunity to re-write the subjects they failed in October / November this year after having gone through the revision lessons provided by the department.
Muzi Mahlambi, department spokesperson, said information about phase one centres and a time table would be made available to pupils at their respective schools. Information about phases two and three, he said, would be communicated to schools and districts next month.