Province’s matrics to benefit from past exam papers

IN AN attempt to rid the Eastern Cape of its tag of dunce of the national matric class, the state has come up with a programme to provide matriculants with question papers and answers from the past four Grade 12 final examinations.

The questions and answers will be compiled in a book – a first for the province. This is one of the province’s endeavours to improve this year’s matric pass rate.

In addition to tutoring and extra classes between May and October, the department will also broadcast extra lessons through television and radio.

This was revealed by the department’s deputy director-general (DDG) for education planning, evaluation and monitoring, Penny Vinjevold, at a news conference at the Education Leadership Institute in Stirling in East London yesterday.

Vinjevold said they were aiming to bring the Grade 12 results to 70% this year.

“Any person hopes for an improvement and what we are hoping for is anything above the 65% achieved last year.

“But hopefully we will go up to the 70% pass mark,” said Vinjevold.

Even with a five percentage-point increase in last year’s matric results, the 65.1% obtained was not enough to save the province, which once again came in last of the nine provinces – its place for seven consecutive years.

This year, there are 80 000 matriculants enrolled at the more than 900 schools in the province.

Vinjevold said the plan to improve the province’s Grade 12 results had three stages.

The first stage took place in the first term of this year, and involved an analysis of the Grade 12 pupils based on their Grade 11 results, categorising schools for support, giving tips to the pupils and setting targets for the number of pupils in all schools offering matric.

The second stage, also known as the second term, was launched yesterday. It will see the department giving priority to five T’s: time, targets, teachers, texts and tests.

“Targets are important – if you ask anyone they will tell you that in order to know where you are going, you need to know where your goalposts are,” said Vinjevold.

The third and final phase of the plan, known as the last push, will take place between July and November.

Details of that plan are still being finalised, said Vinjevold.

She said by May 30, all matriculants will be provided with the Mind the Gap study guides in 11 high-enrolment subjects such as maths, English and science.

Some of the reasons attributed to the province’s poor matric results were teacher absenteeism and teachers spending too little time teaching.

“Teacher absenteeism will be monitored closely and temporary teachers will be deployed in cases of frequent absenteeism,” Vinjevold said. —