Schools anxious as matric prelims begin
Extra classes for some but many struggle to finish syllabus
As matrics begin their preliminary exams tomorrow, pupils at a Limpopo school are way ahead of the pack, having finished their syllabus in May.
For most grade 12s, the prelims will be the first formal exams they will write after the midyear exams were scrapped. But those from Dendron Secondary wrote the June exams as well as a so-called “pre-preliminary exam” which finished on Thursday.
Principal Moloko Matsapola said holding evening classes from 6pm until 9.30pm or 10pm six days a week had helped teachers complete the syllabus by the end of May.
“Our grade 11s from last year, who are now in matric, were adversely affected by the Covid disruptions. We struggled this year to have them ready because we started by teaching the grade 11 syllabus.”
As a result of completing the syllabus early, the school had time to conduct revision programmes and also hold two mock trial exams. All 206 pupils who wrote the recent “pre-preliminary” exams passed English first additional language and Sepedi home language but 17 failed maths.
Matsapola said the maths failures were “a huge setback”. “It is bad as no learner should fail; we want a 100% pass.”
During the release of the 2019 matric results, basic education minister Angie Motshekga singled out the school for praise, saying in her 10 years as minister it had never failed to have a pupil in the matric top 30.
Dendron is a far cry from Lubelo Secondary School on the KwaZulu-Natal north coast. A senior teacher at the school said this week: “We are trying but we are struggling to cover the grade 12 syllabus.”
Though high school pupils have to sit 1.5m apart in class, Lubelo High was forced to cram all 66 matrics into one classroom for English first additional language, isiZulu home language and life sciences because there is only one teacher for each of these subjects.
“There’s absolutely no social distancing due to a shortage of teachers,” the senior teacher said. The school has been conducting extra classes from 6.30am to 8am in a bid to cover the syllabus.
Freedom Park Secondary in Rustenburg in North West has arranged an extra hour of lessons for its 176 matrics in the afternoons from Monday to Friday. Three lessons, each 90 minutes long, are taught on Saturdays.
Asked to comment on preparations for the prelims, a teacher said: “We are getting there. It’s very tough but we are trying.”
Dawie Kriel, principal of Hoërskool Noordheuwel in Krugersdorp, Gauteng, said they were conducting two hours of extra lessons from Mondays to Thursdays. “We are doing that just to see that they are ready for the prelims. A week lost in a grade 12’s life is a lot of time so we have classes until 4.20pm at the moment, trying to catch up.”
Motshekga cancelled the June exams to give teachers time to teach the curriculum.
An education expert warned that because of the disruptions to schooling last year and this year by Covid-19, most grade 12 pupils “may not be sufficiently prepared to write the prelim exam as well as the final exam”.
However, several provincial education departments indicated this week that although some schools were still being affected by closures as a result of Covid infections, pupils were ready to write the prelim exams.
Some principals said teacher shortages and the loss of teaching time because the July holidays were extended by a week had hampered their efforts to complete the syllabus on time. Exam preparations were also affected after most provinces canned the winter camps, which are usually held over the July holidays, because of the spike in infections at schools.
Professor Labby Ramrathan from the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s education faculty said the disruptions to the academic year “would have had an effect on the coverage of the curriculum”.
“Unfortunately, not all grade 12 learners have strong attitudes to engage in independent learning and would rely on the school for their learning. It is largely those learners who want to perform well who will be less affected by the ongoing disruptions due to Covid.”
Mpumalanga education department spokesperson Gerald Sambo said curriculum coverage was at 95% in almost all subjects in the Nkangala district.
His counterpart in Limpopo, Tidimalo Chuene, said schools have ensured that the curriculum in all subjects in grade 12 is “fully or partly covered”.
The North West, Free State and Western Cape provincial education departments said pupils were ready for the preliminary exams.
Northern Cape education department spokesperson, Geoffrey van der Merwe urged parents “to ensure that their children benefit from intervention programmes”.
Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal did not respond to questions.