Tebogo Monama

Tebogo Monama

The countdown to the matric results has officially begun.

All nine provinces have finished marking the exam papers and all that is left is to get the results out on December 28.

But, for some provinces the road was rocky.

In Western Cape pupils had to rewrite the English first language higher grade paper 2 on November 23 after it was discovered that an incorrect paper was handed out to some candidates.

In the same province, three invigilators at Fezeka Secondary School, Gugulethu, who allegedly allowed candidates to cheat during the Afrikaans second language paper and the economics paper, were dismissed.

Despite this, the province managed to finish marking on deadline.

In Limpopo, 19 teachers who were marking biology paper 2 in Polokwane were dismissed after it was dis found they were not qualified to mark the paper because they were not Grade 12 teachers.

But none of these problems hampered the marking process.

Western Cape education spokesman Gert Witbooi said it took nine days for data capturers to collate all the results.

"The province introduced a new system two years ago to ensure accurate capturing of data for every candidate. Northern Cape has now also adopted the system and Free State is testing it."

Umalusi, the national certification authority, is expected to indicate whether it will have certified the results by December 22.

If the results are certified, provinces will start printing and packaging them on December 23 for distribution to schools on December 28.

The spokesman for the national Department of Education, Lunga Ngqengelele, said 599048 candidates had sat for these year's matric exams, up from last year's 554079.