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Pioneer matrics will know their fate today

Mary Papayya

Mary Papayya

Today is crunch time for the more than 152000 KwaZulu-Natal matriculants who pioneered in the new outcomes based education (OBE) curriculum.

Pupils will receive their results from their school principals, some from as early as 8am this morning, according to education officials and teacher unions.

Both yesterday confirmed that all principals will release the exam results at the schools and that the official provincial ceremony will take place tomorrow morning in Durban.

The national department of education earlier this year announced that owing to the reported increase in suicides and other problems associated with the release of the results in public places, it had decided to release results to schools first since it is a "supervised environment".

While the OBE system has been severely criticism from several quarters, union leaders and education officials yesterday remained upbeat about the results.

Provincial education spokesman Ntokozo Maphisa said the marking of the matric exam papers at the 30 marking centres by more than 10000 markers had been completed on time.

"The final step was yesterday when all principals had to verify and mark off the confirmations," Maphisa said. "This included making sure issues such as numbers and names were technically correct.

"MEC Ina Cronje will release the results to the public tomorrow morning. She will also award the province's top achievers, including the top 10 matriculants at public schools, and the top three at independent schools."

The top science and maths achievers will also be recognised as will the top adult learner in the province. The event takes place at Durban's Albert Luthuli Convention Centre.

Sadtu's Sipho Nkosi said releasing the results to school first would "reduce misinformation and suicides among our pupils".

Natu spokesman Alan Thompson said he was optimistic about the results because "our teachers went the extra mile to prepare the learners."

Matric pupils who spoke to Sowetan yesterday said they were looking forward to their results but were a little nervous.

"I am scared but excited at the same time," said Avoca Secondary School pupil Nelisiwe Goba, who wants to be a nurse. The exams went well but we will only know how well when we go to school and get our results."

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