As candidates count down the final hours to the first matric exams on Monday, basic education minister Siviwe Gwarube has appealed for learners to be protected from protest action.
“There are over 800,000 candidates who have this one opportunity to write an exam that can change the course of their lives,” Gwarube said on Sunday. “Protests are very much part of our democratic dispensation. All we ask is that there be some kind of consideration to give our learners their best shot [at] these exams.”
Service delivery protests have previously disrupted matric exams in many parts of SA. In 2022, for example, more than 1,000 matric students in Mpumalanga missed their maths exams due to violent protests over electricity.
If students are unable to write their scheduled exams, they will have to wait until mid-2025 to sit the missed papers.
This year, 727,121 full-time and 155,215 part-time candidates (882,336 in total) will sit the national senior certificate exams. A total of 16,400 students from private schools will write the Independent Examinations Board exams.
The education department was ready to administer the exams, which included 162 papers approved by quality assurance body Umalusi, said Gwarube.
Papers will be written in 6,334 state schools and 575 independent examination centres across SA. Marking is scheduled for the first two weeks of December, and the results are due to be announced on January 14.
Gwarube said extensive security measures were in place to ensure examination papers were not stolen, including tracking devices in the delivery trucks used to transport papers.
Most of the class of 2024 started grade 8 in 2020, the year the coronavirus pandemic began. Their education was severely disrupted by intermittent school closures and rotating attendance schedules implemented in response to successive waves of Covid-19. While the learning losses were worst in the early grades, learners in high schools were also affected by the reduction in contact time.
Several mitigation measures had been implemented by the education department to address these gap, including personalised learning interventions, additional teaching support and socioeconomic care, said Gwarube.
Schools also ran Saturday catch-up programmes, and extended school hours in key subjects.
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