Matriculants may get two years to complete Grade 12
A government gazette has been published and if passed, Grade 12 pupils might be able to do their matric over a two-year period.
NEWCASTLE – The Department of Basic Education is toying with the idea of enabling struggling pupils to complete Grade 12 over a two-year period.
Also read: We demand scholar transport.
A Government Gazette was published on June 23, and it proposed that pupils who failed Grade 11 twice, and were pushed through to Grade 12, would be offered the opportunity to write a part of their examinations in December, and the remainder in June of the following year.
The new programme would be put into place for 2017. However, pupils will be required to fulfill certain criteria in order to benefit from the system, which includes attending class on a regular basis and completing all their assessments.
Elijah Mhlanga, Basic Education spokesperson, said the programme was piloted last year, but there was no uniformity in terms of its applications.
“The uptake was also very low, because it was late in the year,” he explained.
During an interview, Mr Mhlanga noted out of approximately 701 000 pupils who wrote their matric exams in 2015, 80 000 qualified to participate in the system.
Mr Mhlanga explained the reason the new programme was considered was because the current system showed certain pupils were not coping, as they were not as academically inclined as their peers.
“There needs to be a support measure put into place to ensure they pass,” he added.
The aim of the system was to set the number of subjects a pupil wrote over a longer period of time, and pupils would then receive a certificate once all their subjects were written.
What are your thoughts on the proposed change?
Share your thoughts with us in the comments section, and remember to #keepitclean!
