Matrics fine despite earth tremor

AN EARTH tremor was among the minor upsets for matric exams so far, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said yesterday.

However, there had been no major problems, she told reporters in Pretoria.

“We are happy to report that thus far this year’s National Senior Certificate has seen no major incident.”

A magnitude 4 earth tremor shook parts of Johannesburg on November 18.

Exams will be finalised by the end of this month and results come out on January 6.

“The entire process, including capturing and standardisation by Umalusi, will be completed by December 29… the remaining time will be used for verification and cleaning up of data before we release the results publicly.

“There has been a task team appointed to look into various aspects of the NSC including the publishing of the NSC results in newspapers.”

Motshekga said a maths, science and technology department would be set up to help struggling provinces.

Motshekga said she also wanted the annual national assessments to be introduced for Grades 7 and 8. Currently, the assessments are written by pupils in the foundation phase and Grade 9. This year’s assessment results will be released on December 5.

“We have confidence in the credibility of the assessments to give us a diagnostic of the maths and literacy challenges. We are busy analysing the trends that are coming out and we will give you a technical report. These tests tell us more about the system and the curriculum,” said Motshekga.