The class of 2020 will know on Monday how they fared when Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga releases the matric results. Six-hundred-and-16-thousand full-time candidates sat for exams. However, the total number of candidates was over one-million as the department combined the June and November examinations.
Last year’s matric class was the first to contend with the COVID-19 pandemic but stakeholders believe they will do well.
President of the students’ organisation COSAS Douglas Ngubeni, NATU Secretary-General Cynthia Barnes and NAPTOSA’s Basil Manuel are confident of the resilience of the candidates.
“We are expecting a slight improvement from the results of last year even with the challenges the country faced last year, the results won’t be that bad. Yes, they might maintain the same standard even though there were hiccups that were there. I don’t think it would be reasonable to expect an improvement in the results but, I do believe we can expect that results would not drop significantly because in fact I think a lot has been done.”
Meanwhile, the Professional Educators’ Union (PEU) says the class of 2020 is not likely to produce better matric results than last year’s.
PEU president Johannes Motona says the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to negatively affect the matric results.
He says this is because the pandemic disrupted learning and teaching and the maths and science paper two examination papers were leaked and there was a lack of online learning at some schools.
“It was the terrifying school situation as they were in fear of their lives to the pandemic which had a negative effect in the psycho-social well-being, also we need to consider the leakage of some papers like mathematics and physical science paper two which also had a huge impact on this performance.”
Matric results to be announced on Monday:
