Department working around the clock to make sure final exams go smoothly

Grade 12 pupils only have one month to prepare for their national senior certificate (NSC) examinations.

The department of basic education said they are expecting a cohort of 624,733 full time candidates and 176,110 part time candidates to for the October/November examinations in 8,000 examination centres.

Basic education minister Angie Motshekga said they would like to encourage all pupils to use the remaining time to study very hard.

“In terms of system readiness, we have been closely tracking each of the nine provinces in terms of pupil performance data and curriculum coverage, as well as other areas of interest, extremely. This is to ensure that we can pick up challenges in areas such as curriculum coverage in time to intervene,” Motshekga said.

She said every pupil should be afforded the best possible opportunity to achieve the NSC.

“Last push initiatives are being implemented across the country based on learner performance in the preliminary examinations. As a sector, we are cautiously optimistic that all of these efforts will translate into improved outcomes in the 2019 examinations,” Motshekga said.

She said the Council of Education Minister (CEM) discussed that it is important to work closely with the department of home affairs to ensure that all pupils have identity documents for a number of reasons.

“Pupils who write examinations without their identity documents often experience problems after the exams as Umalusi will not certificate them,” Motshekga said.