The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union wishes the Matric Class of 2022 all the best of luck in their final examinations. More than 920 000 full and part-time learners will be writing English Paper 1 on Monday, 31 October 2021 while others have already written the Computer Applications Technology and Information Technology papers on 25 and 26 October 2022.
As a union for education workers, the Union can attest that educators are ready to take this class through as they write these final examinations which mark an end to primary and secondary schooling and open the doors to tertiary schooling and the world of work.
The importance of this examination cannot be over emphasised.
The 2022 class is the largest cohort to sit for these examinations. It is this Class that has suffered the most challenges. In 2020, while this Class was in Grade 10, it experienced Lockdown due to the Covid 19 pandemic and lost almost half of the year as schools closed in March and opened in July on a rotational basis which continued well into 2021. This Class only experienced full-time classroom attendance in 2022 while doing Grade 12. As we heaved a sigh of relief as Covid 19 subsided and Lockdown restrictions lifted allowing learners to go back to school on a full-time basis, we were confronted with Loadshedding.
Not all schools could afford alternative energy sources to ensure effective learning and teaching in the classroom. Learners could not properly prepare for schooling in their homes due to loadshedding.
We continue to be concerned about blackouts that will negatively impact on the learners throughout the process of writing. Any disturbance during revision causes anxiety. Blackouts cause delays in travelling and students may find themselves arriving at examination centres already emotionally disturbed. The candidates writing and their teachers will carry levels of anxiety through this examination period because they have not rested as they needed to cover three years of work. However, we commend the teachers as well as the learners for being innovative in the face of this challenge and improvised.
We thank this Class for giving all their time to catch-up programmes which meant sacrificing their mornings, evenings, and holidays. Further, we welcome the Department of Basic Education’s curriculum recovery programmes to assist this Class in the form of study guides, Woza Matric programmes using television, radio, and social media platforms.
While we welcome the catch -up programmes by the Department of Basic Education, these will not be sustainable eventually. Study camps, weekend and holiday classes which have been in place even before the Covid 19 pandemic, put enormous strain to both the learners and teachers. We therefore call on the department to put more resources to capacitate learning ad teaching in lower Grades so that schools will not have to subject themselves to such catch-up programmes in higher Grades.
We call for flexibility in time management to accommodate learners or teachers arriving late due to delays caused by load-shedding. We hope all examination centres have facilities in place to ensure they are not affected by load-shedding.
Lastly, we support the call by SANCO and UMALUSI for the protection and support of these learners by communities and that protest actions must not disrupt any sitting of examinations because education is critical for the success of our country in fighting against unemployment, inequality, and poverty.
We further call on families and the guardians of the learners to give them all the support and space to study and prepare accordingly during this time of writing examinations.
ISSUED BY: SADTU SECRETARIAT
CONTACT:
General Secretary, Mugwena Maluleke: 082 783 2968
Deputy General Secretary, Nkosana Dolopi: 082 709 5651
Media Officer, Nomusa Cembi: 082 719 5157
Secretariat Officer, Xolani Fakude: 071 355 1566