Struggling SA students may get two years to complete matric
The Department of Basic Education is mulling over a plan to enable struggling students to complete their matric certificate over a two-year period.
A government gazette published on Friday, 3 June 2016, proposes that learners who fail Grade 11 twice, but are pushed through to Grade 12, would be afforded an opportunity to write a portion of their exams in December and the remainder in June of the following year.
The new programme would be put into place for 2017, while students would need to fulfill certain criteria in order to be a part of the new system, including attending class on a regular basis, and complete all their assessments.
“We piloted it last year but there was no uniformity in terms of its application. The uptake was also very low because it was late in the year,” said Basic Education spokesman Elijah Mhlanga.
In an interview with Talk 702, Mhlanga noted that out of approximately 701,000 students who wrote matric exams in 2015, 80,000 could have qualified for such an arrangement as outlined by the department.
“We want everyone who enters the education system to leave with a matric certificate of good quality. He said that the current system shows that some learner are not coping because they are not gifted the same way. There needs to be support measure put into place to ensure that they pass,” Mhlanga said.
Read: Your matric certificate has no value: report
The aim is to stagger the number of subjects that a student writes over a longer period of time.
He said that passing students would still receive a single certificate once all subjects have been written up.
“We are receiving an increasing number of people who could not pass matric in the past 10 years who are coming back. A matric certificate is very important in the lives of people,” the spokesperson said.
The public have 21 days from June 3 to comment.
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