Matric exams possibly ‘compromised’, says analyst as schools close once again

No one will be able to dictate when the Covid-19 pandemic will reach its peak, and thus planning in fixed time periods may not be effective.

This is according to education researcher and policy analyst, Sara Black, who said President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement of schools’ closure lacked detail on specific issues.

Just a week after teachers’ unions called for schools to close amid the looming peak in Covid-19 infections in South Africa, Cabinet decided to shut all public schools for four weeks – but there are exceptions.

Public schools will close from 27 July to 24 August.

Grade 12 pupils will, however, only take a week’s break and return on 3 August, while pupils in Grade 7 will get a two-week break, returning on 10 August.

“The detail was slim regarding the exams, but the idea that one can set a fixed time – one week, two weeks, four weeks… We would have thought that by now, we have understood that that is not the criteria we use to adjudicate opening or closing [of schools].

“The virus sits on a clock, [and] we must constantly re-evaluate conditions, and respond accordingly. But we can’t dictate the calendar as to when the peak will pass and how long it will take,” Black told News24 following Ramaphosa’s address on Thursday.

Ramaphosa also announced that the 2020 academic year would be extended into next year.

Black said the elephant in the room was around Grade 12 and what would happen to the National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations.

She added that from school principals with whom she had been in touch, it was clear that even if Grade 12 pupils were back at school “the validity and trustworthiness of those exams is already compromised”.

Black said teaching and learning were already compromised by various issues, including the levels of anxiety many pupils faced.

She said the mental state pupils were in could compromise their learning.

“Many of them are in households with people who have lost jobs, many in households with people who have succumbed to Covid-19 and these are not conditions under which one can fairly adjudicate what a child has learned,” Black said.

She added that the idea of Grade 12 returning after a week’s break, created a concrete idea of what would be happening with the NSC exams and the extension of the academic year.

Reacting to the decision for the closure, South African Democratic Teachers’ Union general secretary Mugwena Maluleke said there was no need to be chasing the completion of the curriculum and that it should be understood that there was a pandemic and therefore not everything would be covered by pupils.

“We might have got to reconsider not looking at other subjects, but at particular subjects that are really required in terms of admission at universities and so forth. So, we may not need to stretch learners and teachers. These are some of the things that we will be discussing [with the department],” Maluleke told News24.

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