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South Africa: Race On to Pass Matric Under 'Old' Curriculum
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Business Day (Johannesburg)
8 May 2008
Posted to the web 8 May 2008
Sue Blaine
Johannesburg
THE race is on for the almost 200000 matric candidates who failed last year, and others who want to pass matric under the old curriculum, to write their exams and pass.
If they do not pass by 2011, they will be forced to return to Grade 10 in order to follow the new curriculum, which packages grades 10, 11 and 12 as a full course, unless the national education department gets a new National Senior Certificate (known generally as a "matric certificate") especially designed for adults off the ground.
The department has only recently called for people to help it design the senior certificate for adults, which will allow adult learners to complete a one-year course and will exempt them from the oral examinations and continuous assessment that are part and parcel of the new matric certificate, said Theuns Laubscher, chief academic officer for private education company Educor.
"The department said the NSC for adults would come out in 2009, but we know it won't," he said.
But Penny Vinjevold, the national department's deputy director-general of further education and training, said it was "not exactly clear" when the adult NSC would be started.
There was no reason it had to be implemented from next year because those who wanted to write their exams under the old curriculum had until 2011 to do so, she said.
The department believed about 170000 of the 179000 matric candidates who failed their exams last year had registered to write this year's mid-year exams, and was "delighted" that the number registering was so high, said Vinjevold.
Analysis will have to be done to determine exactly how many of the 170000 who have registered failed last year, and how many are people who made failed or aborted attempts in previous years, she said.
To write the exams -- which began on Monday -- candidates have to have a matric exam registration number from last year, or they have to apply for special permission from their provincial education department on a case-by-case basis.
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This, however, causes problems for those who have been out of the school system for several years because they are not guaranteed of being allowed to write the mid-year exams.
There are also thousands of people who drop out of the school system for numerous reasons -- from pregnancy to running out of money -- and return several years later to complete their matric, said Laubscher.
"If you take our Grade 12s last year, there were 12000 and the average age was 25 -- 21% were over 30 and 6% were over 40. The government has the idea that people drop out and go back the next year, but it doesn't work like that," he said.
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