Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga has encouraged the public to comment on the proposed school calendar for the 2023 academic year.
The school calendar for the 2023 academic year has been gazetted for public comment and has been published on all the Department of Basic Education (DBE) platforms.
“A staggered calendar is proposed – one for coastal provinces, and another for inland provinces… Your inputs are important. We urge you to go through the proposed 2023 school calendar, and submit your comments in writing. The details are available on the draft calendar itself,” the Minister said on Saturday during a media briefing.
Motshekga said the COVID-19 pandemic has caused serious disruptions in the sector.
Meanwhile, the Basic Education sector has vaccinated 517 000 people for COVID-19, an 89% vaccination success rate.
“Reports on the reasons for outstanding numbers include distance to vaccination sites, vaccination hesitancy, preference of one type of vaccine to another, recent positive COVID-19 results, as well as medical and religious reasons, all account for some of the people who are still not vaccinated.
“Encouraging is the fact that we continue to receive requests for assistance from some of our personnel, who were initially hesitant but are now coming forward to ask for help to get the vaccines. We still hope that educators, who are not yet vaccinated, will join the general population vaccination programmes that are underway,” the Minister said.
May/June National Senior Certificate exams
The writing of exams for the matric May/June examination period commenced on Wednesday, 26 May 2021, and concluded on Wednesday, 7 July 2021.
The 2021 May/June examination is the second examination opportunity that is offered to candidates who wrote the November 2020 examinations; and is an examination for adult candidates sitting for matric examinations.
“A total 249 851 candidates enrolled to write this examination. This included both the National Senior Certificate and Senior Certificate candidates; 106 711 of these candidates were National Senior Certificate candidates; and 143 140 of these candidates, were Senior Certificate candidates,” the Minister said.
The DBE and the Provincial Education Departments (PEDs) monitored the writing of the May/June 2021 Grade 12 examination.
“The writing of the examination was successfully concluded without any major disruptions. With the early closure of schools on 30 June 2021, due to the move to adjusted Alert Level 4, school principals were requested to administer the examination until its conclusion.
“The marking of the May/June 2021 Grade 12 examination, commenced on 8 July 2021, and concluded on Monday, 19 July 2021. A total of 772 404 scripts had to be marked and a total of nine 9 323 markers were utilised for the marking across the 54 marking centres.
“Despite the protest actions and the looting in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, the marking was successfully completed and the capturing of marks is currently in progress,” the Minister said.
The DBE will complete the processing of all candidate data for the Umalusi standardisation meeting of 6 August 2021. The results will be released to candidates on 24 August 2021.
The National Senior Certificate (NSC) candidates, who were not successful in this May/June examination, can register to write the November 2021 NSC examination.
Source: South African Government News Agency