The Department of Basic Education is scrapping supplementary exams for matrics, in favour of a new system that will delay rewrites to the middle of the year.<\/p>\n
According to the department, speaking to IOL<\/a><\/strong>, the decision was approved in 2017 to do away with the current system and introduce a new one that will make it easier for students\u00a0 to rewrite their failed subjects.<\/p>\n The way supplementary exams currently work is that any student who failed a matric paper – or would like an opportunity to do better in one – can register to rewrite with an extra-curricular set of papers written in the first few months of the new school year.<\/p>\n However, department spokesperson\u00a0Elijah Mhlanga said that most students were struggling with this timeline, as there was not enough time to prepare in the month in between exams.<\/p>\n The new system which will kick in next year, pushes a second chance out to the middle of the year where a second national exam (currently the Senior Certificate exam) will be held.<\/p>\n According to Mhlanga, the positives that come with this new system include giving students more time to prepare, and thus a better chance at passing, as well as saving the department the millions of rands spent setting up the supplementary exams early in the year.<\/p>\n On the negative side, however, students who need to rewrite subjects will have to wait a full year before they can apply to go to university – though the department has argued that this has generally already been the case, with the current supplementary exams already being too late for access to most institutions.<\/p>\n Changing the system<\/strong><\/p>\n The scrapping of the February supplementary exams is part of a wider process to streamline South Africa’s three groups of exams – which are all currently set differently – first proposed in 2017<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n According to the proposals, the goal is to streamline the current three sets (National Senior Certificate, Senior Certificate and supplementary exams) into just one exam (National Senior Certificate).<\/p>\n By 2019, the supplementary exams will be merged with the Senior Certificate exams (intended for young adults aged 18 – 21) which are held in June.<\/p>\n By 2020, the department wants to do away with these exams by merging that group with the National Senior Certificate (matric) exams, held at the end of the year.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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