Hundreds of Grade 12 learners from Pakamani Senior Secondary School in Butterworth have had their futures compromised because of the inept bungling of their Life Orientation paper during the matric exams last year.
Not only will these learners not receive their results with the rest of South Africa’s class of 2022 matrics this week, but they will be forced to rewrite the subject. The subsequent delays in getting their results could easily cost them university placements this year!
Full disciplinary action needs to be taken against those responsible, and heads must roll! The hardship inflicted on these learners is unforgivable.
I have submitted parliamentary questions to The Eastern Cape MEC for Education, Fundile Gade, today to get to the bottom of this travesty.
The MEC must explain how it is possible that the school failed to hand in half of the answer scripts for marking and how those which were submitted did not have the respective learners’ names on them.
Some of the 212 learners affected could even be forced to redo matric, but will not be able to do so at their current school because the matric class of 2023 is already full.
Hundreds of thousands of learners who attend schools in the Eastern Cape are expected to excel in a school environment that is poisoned by a broken education system.
These learners spent months preparing for these exams, taking extra classes, and working hard to achieve top results to further their studies at a tertiary institution.
The inability of the EC Department of Education to identify the mistake, implement consequence management, and assist the learners in this regard, shows the detachment of the Department from the array of issues faced by learners, teachers, and parents.
This is yet another prime example of how the ANC’s poor administration of a government department has jet again gravely and negatively affected the lives of the children of this province.