Protests against the delivery of services are increasingly posing a serious threat to grade 12 students taking their final exams. Rolling blackouts and bad weather have also been mentioned as being among the difficulties that the candidates face.
On Sunday in Pretoria, the Education Department provided a media briefing on the status of the National Senior Certificate exams, which got underway on 25 October. This year, 923 000 full- and part-time candidates sat for the National Senior Certificate (NSC) exam.
During the media briefing, the education department’s Chief Director for Examinations, Rufus Poliah, revealed that a total of 53 learners at Phand'umfundo Secondary School in Etwatwa, Gauteng, were unable to write their exams as a result of service delivery demonstrations, according to the Department of Basic Education.
According to the Education Department, service delivery protests are becoming a deterrent to matriculants. Due to a protest over the delivery of services in Mngungundlovu, KwaZulu-Natal, police had to be called to accompany education officials to the testing locations. Some students in Etwatwa on the East Rand were unable to take their exams.
The DBE’s Director of Communications, Elijah Mhlanga has confirmed that the matter is currently being investigated after the department received reports about similar disruptive incidents.
Well, a situation like this one is one that we are investigating in fact the chief director for National assessment and public exams confirmed yesterday that all these irregularities which were reported to the Department of basic education were part of an investigation.
He added that a committee of individuals reviews all reported abnormalities, assesses their merits, and then, after the process, decide what will happen to all impacted students.
The department has also denounced many reported instances when students were denied the opportunity to write because they supposedly owed school fees, including the turning away of a pregnant learner in the Western Cape.
Despite the difficulties, the department insists that the exams are proceeding without a hitch.
