The Basic Education Minister admitted that a matric exams task team announced nine months ago had not started work.
|||Cape Town - Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga admitted on Monday that a task team probing matric exams that she announced nine months ago had not started its work because her department had been unable to finalise who would sit on it.
Interviewed on 567 Cape Talkon Monday morning, the minister said there had been “delays” in finalising the names, but vowed that the first meeting would be held this month.
“I can certainly tell you that the first meeting is going to be in July and you can expect a report in the next six months. There have been delays in terms of finalising the names. But it is also the process because we have so many other committees running and I had to say which one comes first,” she said.
She told talk show host Kieno Kammies that her department had spent the past six months finalising the names, doing groundwork and retrieving files needed for the investigation.
The committee was widely welcomed when it was announced last October, amid concern about the quality of the matric exams.
In 2012 a record 73.9 percent of candidates passed the exam, the highest pass rate since the current National Senior Certificate was introduced in 2006. But only 26.6 of these obtained university passes – and they were only required to obtain a pass mark of 30 percent in some subjects.
Brad Brockman,
general secretary of education NGO Equal Education, said the department had set itself the task of evaluating the qualification.
“They should be held accountable,” he said. “When we look at the pass requirements, we should ask whether our matrics are able to access tertiary education opportunities, or are they sitting at home, looking for low-paying work?”
Motshekga said Equal Education had not asked her how far the process was. “They should have checked and I would have told them.”
The minister told the radio station the matric exams had not changed and suggested critics did not like it when the government succeeded.
“They didn’t write anything new in 2012 (compared to 2006, 2008 and 2010). The only difference now is that we are going up and there’s a discomfort with that.”
Cape Argus