Delays in schools re-opening to impact on teaching: Education Department

Director-General in the Department of Basic Education Mweli Matanzima says delays to the re-opening of schools is going to have a huge impact on the growing teaching and learning backlog.

Briefing joint committees of parliament on Basic Education, Matanzima says the department is expected to do a lot of teaching catch-ups for both Grades 12 and 11 respectively.

He says this is going to be a mammoth task.

Matanzima says, “It is going to be a burden on the system, not only to catch up with the Grade 12 content, but we still have to catch up again with Grade 11 which was lost last year. So it’s going to be extremely difficult for the system to be able to recover the learning loses.”

No further extensions

The Department of Basic Education says it is optimistic that there will be no further extension for the release of 2020 Grade 12 results.

With the marking of exam scripts complete, the department says it is all systems go for the release of the results on February 22.

Basic Education Deputy Minister Reginah Mhaule says, “What is still remaining then is all that comes after marking, the capturing of the marks and all this…I think we will have ample time to do all that is supposed to be done before the announcement of the results. The date has not changed, the results are still going to be released in February.”

In the video below, the Department’s Director for Public Examinations Priscilla Ogunbanjo spoke on the status of the marking process of National Senior Certificate exam scripts and the way forward: