The Class of 2020 Get Ready to Write Exams

With matrics due to sit for their first exam on Thursday, there are still worries that pupils have not been given an equal chance to succeed given the effects of the COVID-19 lockdown.

More than one million candidates are set to sit for their final exams this year and the Basic Education Department said that it was confident that they would do well.

But teachers’ union Sadtu is worried that schools in the country’s far-flung communities were facing an uphill battle.

With South Africa among the most unequal societies in the world, Sadtu is worried that pupils from low-income households have not been adequately equipped to deal with the challenges of COVID-19 ahead of this year’s exams.

Dolopi said that while challenges were not new, they had been worsened by the pandemic.

However Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga Motshekga said to eNCA she felt emotional considering what teachers and learners had to go through to save the academic year.

She hopes learners have had the support needed to prepare.

“From all the reports we’ve been getting…we have no doubt that the system is ready. If anything arises it would have been beyond our control,” she said.

“But anything that we could manage we’ve put in place to make sure that we have successful exams.”