Final countdown to 2016 National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations
The Department of Basic Education has put final preparations in place and is primed to administer the 2016 Grade 12 National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations. The Department has been hard at work ensuring an appropriate and enabling environment is set to enable seamless administration of the 2016 NSC examinations.
In September 2016 a team from DBE briefed the Council of Education Ministers (CEM) as well as the Portfolio Committee on Basic Education on the state of readiness for this year’s examinations. With a total of 677 141 registered full time and 150 183 part-time candidates, the 2016 examinations will see a total of 9216 additional candidates from the number that sat in 2015.
The education sector has recorded tremendous improvements in access; redress and equity, learning outcomes have shown an upward trend in national, regional and international tests. This has come as a result of the departments focus on system readiness while implementing programmes that ensured that learners received sufficient support which included measures to complement normal teaching and learning programmes to bring about improvements in performance. These include; language support, subject specific content support, tracking learner performance, and support for progressed learners.
The Basic Education Portfolio Committee conducted a week long oversight visit to Limpopo from 19 � 23 September where they personally took stock of some of the steps taken to prevent the leakage of 2016 question papers.
In 2016 all storage points across the country have or are in the final stages of being audited to ensure compliance with the minimum security standards. Storage points that do not comply will not be allowed to store question papers.
In addition all exam centres will be audited by the Provincial Education Department (PED) while centres classified as ”high risk” along with independent centres will receive greater priority.
KwaZulu-Natal at 170 631, Gauteng at 112 111 and Limpopo with 110 557 candidates have the largest registered candidates of the 2016 NSC Examinations which will commence on 26 October and conclude on November 29. The Minister of Basic Education will announce the outcome of the 2016 Grade 12 exams on January 4, 2017.
Source: Government of South Africa