As the 2022 National Senior Certificate (NSC) exam session comes to a close for thousands of matrics, Western Cape Minister of Education David Maynier has commended Grade 12 learners across the province for concluding their high school careers despite facing tremendous adversity.
Also read: Maynier urges matrics not to cheat ahead of NSC exams
This week saw two days of rewrites, with seven candidates retaking their Computer Applications Technology (CAT) practical and one redoing their English First Additional Language paper yesterday.
Over 3,300 markers will now be working at 11 marking centres for the next few weeks.
“It is an enormous task,” he said. “In total, they will mark 870 000 scripts. We thank them for their diligence and commitment to ensuring that this exam session is fair and credible.”
According to Maynier, among the greatest challenges faced during the session were loadshedding and the SANTACO taxi strike.
“While our practical exams on 25 and 26 October had a delayed start at some exam centres, candidates were still able to complete the exams successfully,” he said. “Loadshedding did not have a major impact on the written exams, as all venues are required to have sufficient natural light.”
“The SANTACO taxi strike on 21 and 22 November 2022 affected 354 Life Sciences candidates and 415 Geography candidates. Due to excellent preparation by our schools, these candidates were either accommodated at an alternate exam centre or arrived slightly late but still had their full time allocation to write.”
However, Maynier said that neither of these challenges caused a single candidate to miss an exam. “This is quite an achievement given that we had nearly 74 000 candidates writing 124 papers over seven weeks.”
He also added that despite a reminder that cheating would not be tolerated, a total of 15 reports of candidates allegedly bringing cellphones into the exam room and 14 reports of candidates allegedly bringing in unauthorised material or “crib notes”, were recorded.
“We also had one report of alleged copying involving 2 candidates.”
“Hearings are being conducted with these candidates, and they will have a fair chance to respond to the allegations.”
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More than 128,000 pupils missed school because of taxi strikes
Picture: Cape{town}Etc