/ 7 November 2006

School is getting tougher

Grade 11 learners will write a national examination at the end of next year as part of the national Department of Education’s efforts to prepare learners, teachers and parents for a ‘tougher” school-exit qualification.

Schools will receive examples of what the examination, set by the department, would look like beforehand.

Teachers of individual schools, or a cluster of schools, will mark the papers and schools will decide on the promotion of their own learners. A sample of 5% to 10% of the answering sheets will be moderated on a provincial level and the national department will conduct a second level of moderation.

Penny Vinjevold, the Deputy Director General of further education and training in the department, made these announcements at a press conference, saying these steps were necessary to prepare the ­education system for the National Senior Certificate (NSC), South Africa’s first ever national school-­leaving exam, in 2008.

The NSC, which is based on a new curriculum for Grades 10 to 12, leading to the NSC in 2008, will replace what the senior certificate, what is commonly known as ‘matric”. The curriculum was introduced in Grade 10 this year.

‘The exam is going to be tougher and this is what the public, employers and higher education [universities] asked for,” she said.

Vinjevold said in preparing for the NSC the department has been focusing on assessment, teacher training and textbooks.

She said since ‘teachers teach to the task” the department was ­guiding them through good assessment tasks, including the Grade 11 examination, and quality text books and training to know what to expect by 2008.

‘Teachers must know what the standards are in Grade 10 and grade 11, and not only get a wake-up call in Grade 12 when learners sit for the NSC,” Vinjevold said.

Other steps, in addition to the Grade 11 examination, to prepare for the NSC in 2008 include:

  • Exemplar Grade 10 question papers to help schools this year with pitching their own year-end papers at the right standard; and
  • A pilot project in which eight to 12 schools per province will write these papers under examination conditions to help the department with setting the Grade 11 and 12 examinations next year and in 2008.

These are, however, interim arrangements for 2006 and 2007 and thereafter, schools will manage the Grades 10 and 11 examinations themselves.

Vinjevold said with the new Grades 10 to 12 curriculum the department have ‘upped standards”.

The reasons, she said, are:

  • Learners are required to do a minimum of seven subjects and not six like under the old system;
  • Each of the individual subjects will be more demanding (therefore learners should carefully think before doing eight or more subjects);
  • Being cognitively more demanding, the curriculum will require extensive reading and writing and that all learners study some form of mathematics; and
  • Learners could no longer pass with a minimum aggregate (which meant they could fail two to three subjects as long as they collect 720 marks); they have to pass six subjects (four with 40% and three with 30%).

To achieve success in the tougher curriculum, the department called on schools to adhere to the minimum number of tuition hours, to ensure that reading, writing and calculating skills were practised and that learners have up to three hours of homework everyday to hone these abilities.

With the 2006 matric examination around the corner, Norman Sishi, chief director in the department, said that all systems were ‘combat ready”.

This year 85% of Grade 12 learners will write nationally set papers in eleven subjects: maths, science, English, biology, accounting, history, geography, economics, business economics, agriculture and Afrikaans.

Vinjevold called on learners to use every possible opportunity to prepare for the exam. Her advice to learners, included:

l Read 40 to 50 pages with concentration and for understanding (without TV or cellphones switched on);

* Write more than 500 words a day as writing requires practice and thought; and

* Exercise and live a healthy lifestyle.