Educators object to Grade 12 prelim timetable to no avail

Various high school principals and educators have expressed their deep disappointment and frustration with the Department of Education over the preliminary Grade 12 exams timetable, accusing the department of wanting to disadvantage learners who have Afrikaans First Additional Language (FAL) as a subject.
This follows after all the Afrikaans FAL exams were scheduled to be written on the same day as each of the English Home Language (HL) exams.
On Monday these Grade 12s had to write their English HL Essays exam and Afrikaans FAL Essays exam. At the time of going to print yesterday (Wednesday) they were scheduled to write the Literature exam for each language, which according to one teacher, was a lot of cramming work and included a drama or short story, a novel and 10 poems for each language. Their final English HL and Afrikaans FAL exams will be the Language papers, which will also be written on the same day being 5 September.
Those who spoke to Polokwane Observer in this regard requested anonymity for fear of being victimised by the department.
According to one school principal, he lodged a written complaint to the department as soon as he received the exam timetable. “However, to date I have received absolutely no response. At the end of the day, our children will suffer. The department wants us to have a 100% pass rate but this is a blow and will most likely bring down the pass rate with around 40%,” he said.
An educator at a different school said they also requested a change and submitted alternatives but received no response from the department. “We submitted our complaint several times, on time. This is a huge disadvantage to our learners who take these subjects. It is very clear to me that the department is discriminating against Afrikaans,” she said.
Yet another school principal concurred with this, adding that his suggestion on adjusting the timetable had also been ignored.
Random checks with various schools revealed that other than this issue, the Grade 12 preliminary exams are running smoothly.
Hoër Tegniese Skool Tom Naudé principal Piet Holtzhauzen said thus far the exams are running smoothly and aside from the timetable, no other issues have been raised.
Noorderland High School principal Thabo Ratema said the Grade 12s had no issue with the timetable and everything was running smoothly.
Education spokesperson Sam Makondo said the timetable is usually given to circuit managers and schools in the form of drafts for input before the final timetable is issued. “In this case, the school responded late. We confirmed that indeed they did receive the draft for input but unfortunately they raised the concern after receiving the final timetable. We will consider the request for the coming years,” he said.
Makondo added that the intention was not to disadvantage or discriminate against anyone, as suggested. “The department can never target a particular language as doing so will be working against ourselves. What we are going to do as the department is to analyse the results of the candidates in these subjects and establish if indeed the timetable was disadvantageous,” he concluded.

Story: KAREN VENTER
>>karen@observer.co.za