Johannesburg - The Department of Basic Education will implement a three-year recovery programme to ensure learners catch up on work they missed out this year.
School closures because of Covid19 meant that learners lost 47 school days.
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Minister Angie Motshekga said while schools worked on catch-up programmes, the department would implement a recovery plan in the next three years.
“So, as part of the three-year curriculum recovery plan, from 2021, we will be implementing the recovery annual teaching plans (ATP) in all grades. The basis of the recovery ATPs, is the trimmed curriculum; but now includes the learning losses to be recovered in each grade, based on the learning losses in the previous grade.
“The recovery process will occur over a three-year period, straddling 2021 to 2023, to gradually recover the learning losses, while building on foundational content required for the next grade. The multi-year recovery plan also ensures that the impact of further learning losses are minimised,” Motshekga said.
She said the main focus would be on the core and fundamental content knowledge, skills, attitudes and values required in each grade and subject, to ensure deep learning and content mastery as opposed to superficial learning.
She said about 700 matric candidates tested positive for Covid-19 this year. The majority, 542, were in the Eastern Cape. They were able to write their exams in isolation areas.
In regards to the leaked matric exam papers, Motshekga said they would approach the court to clarify some issues in relation to the judgment that candidates should not have to rewrite the leaked exam papers.
“The North Gauteng High Court ruling did not help either, because it did not deal with the credibility, integrity and fairness of the 2020 National Senior Certificate exam, taking into account the compromise of the 2020 exams, resulting from the leaks of Mathematics Paper 2 and Physical Science Paper 2.
“The public must be reminded that any compromise of the National Senior Certificate examinations, cannot only be justified through the number of the defaulting candidates, but mainly through the extent of the compromise. We must state upfront that the compromise was not localised, as was the case in 2016, but it was widespread, as all provinces were implicated,” she said.
In the meantime the marking of the exam scripts has begun.
They will await standardisation from Umalusi before results are released in February.
The Star