Minister Motshekga: Load shedding won’t disrupt matric exams
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga says load shedding won’t disrupt this year’s exams.
The Minister addressed the public on Sunday on the state of the department’s readiness as matric students start sitting for their final exams on Monday.
Motshekga says they have created a timetable that accommodates the load-shedding schedule, with some exam papers being written before or after the set times.
She says when it comes to subjects like ICT which require reliable electricity, the department will “work around” the challenge:
“Even if there’s load shedding, tomorrow we are writing English so we’ll use natural light. So it’s really working around it. We can deal with English with normal light so it’s going to be written during the day…whether there’s load shedding or there’s no load shedding, we’ll continue to write.”
The Basic Education Department also said it is confident that it offered enough support to prepare students for matric exams.
READ: Motshekga confident of department’s readiness for matric final exams
The department noted that Eastern Cape pupils were falling behind this year’s 2022 matric class. The province had the second most improved matric results last year.
As one of the support measures for these pupils – the department’s Moses Simelane said learning programmes were extended in the mornings and afternoons.
“Learning and teaching support materials in the form of soft and hard copies of the Mind the Gap study guides [were used] and mock exams were written in June to prepare,” he said.
He added that they targeted two main subjects in their contingency measures.
“The Eastern Cape province for example targeted technical mathematics and isiXhosa home languages,” he said.
In addition to this, the Basic Education department said underperforming schools in this year’s matric class underwent a 10-day winter programme.
The department said it is confident it has prepared matrics for the road ahead.
Simelane said the winter programme was set up to help pupils in underachieving schools with revision and to improve performance.
“It was underperforming schools that were given attention and they were given all the support and the intervention measures,” he said.
He added that attendance was good.
“Actual attendance as well was very good, between 80 and 100 percent.”
While this year’s class was the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and had continued to grapple with the worst load-shedding the country has seen, the department is confident that the support offered was enough to prepare the students for the exams.
-EWN
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