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No serious abnormalities in Matric exams
4 December 2008
There have been no serious irregularities in the 2008 matric exams, said education department deputy director general Penny Vinjevold on Wednesday.
"There have been less than five reports of learners trying to crib. Those are the only allegations.
"This did not compromise the exams," Vinjevold told journalists in
Pretoria.
Matric exams ended on Wednesday.
She said these allegations would be investigated.
The department's director general Duncan Hindle said 593,000 pupils sat for the exams, 28225 more pupils than last year.
"Its a huge increase," he said, adding that the marking of exam papers which started on Tuesday was scheduled to be completed next Thursday.
Pupils could collect their results from their respective schools on December 29 as opposed to seeing them in the media.
The minister would officially release the results of the exams on December 30.
Vinjevold said that matriculants who happen to fail their exams in 2008 could still repeat their matric next year in a classroom situation or long distance.
Hindle again dispelled the notion that there was a shortage of teachers.
This followed a weekend newspaper report that there was a shortage of about 94 000 teachers in the country.
The director general said it was correct that there was an attrition rate of "just under 12000" but that by 2015 there would be enough teachers trained.
"The attrition rate is very low, at about three percent; other countries are at about 10 percent," he said.
He said that the suggestion of a "crisis" needed to be "dispelled".
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