Matric exams in EC wrap up without major incident
Matric exams in the Eastern Cape concluded on Wednesday with no major incidents reported, except for one disruption that saw 363 “second chance programme” candidates fail to write English paper 1 on October 23 due to protests.
This year’s exams started on October 23, with a total of 80,210 full-time, 2,602 independent candidates and 22,377 part time candidates.
The exams ended on Wednesday, with candidates sitting for the last two papers – agricultural management practice and design.
The one incident was at Ndaliso Senior Secondary School in O R Tambo, where the English paper 1 had to be postponed to after the second chance programme candidates refused to write the exams and staged a protest.
They demanded to be allowed to write all their exams in the current exam season instead of getting multiple exam opportunities.
The protest saw the school’s admin block being torched.
This meant 217 Grade 11 pupils’ geography, business studies and computer applications technology exams had to be postponed. They will be written at a later date.
Education spokesperson Loyiso Pulumani said apart for the incident at Ndaliso, minor registration incidents were detected on the first day of exams. However, those incidents were managed.
“Districts were provided with manually generated mark sheets to manage these cases. All the cases were forwarded to head offices in Zwelitsha and additional mark sheets were provided,” he said.
Pulumani said 44 provincial monitors were appointed to monitor all districts including “high risk” centres.
“Anomalies and irregularities were rectified on the spot and reported daily to our head offices, and a provincial monitoring report was collated and submitted bi-weekly to the department of basic education,” said Pulumani.
Marking of the scripts will take place between December 1 and December 15 at 19 marking centres.
Preliminary results will be checked on December 26 in all districts by school principals.
The matric results will be announced on January 4 2019.