Johannesburg - South African pupils writing their final high school examinations from this week will be subjected to the same high standards applied to previous years, despite the disruptions to the 2020 calendar caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the department of basic education said on Monday.
Some 1,058,699 candidates are set to write the examinations which will run from November 5 to December 15, the department said in a statement.
South African schools were closed for several months from late March as the government enforced a nationwide lockdown to try and contain transmissions of the coronavirus, which has to date infected 726,823 people in the country, the highest national tally in Africa and the 12th highest in the world.
“The sector has had to double its efforts to ensure that the class of 2020, despite the disruptions of the academic year, are fully prepared for this examination,” the education department said.
“Due to the unprecedented loss of academic time as a result of Covid-19, measures such as the provision of supplementary material, vacation classes, after-school programmes, teacher content training, placement of volunteer teachers, as well as alternative ways of grouping and teaching learners were put in place.”
It said on advice from the department of health, students presenting a body temperature of above 38°C during the screening process would be allowed to write examinations in isolation and would not be allowed to associate with other learners even afterwards.
Their medical condition would be closely monitored in subsequent exams.
Despite the negative impact of the coronavirus outbreak on teaching and learning, innovative measures had been developed and used to ensure students’ readiness, the education department said.
“Whilst significant efforts have been made to recover the academic year and provide extraordinary support to the learners, the total impact of the abnormal educational context remains an unknown and therefore a concern,” it cautioned.