Pretoria – The Department of Basic Education says its all systems go for the 2015 National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations which commences on Monday.
The department reported that a total of 801 688 candidates have enrolled for the 2015 NSC examinations which includes 674 232 full-time and 127 456 part-time candidates.
“This signifies an increase of 122 644 full-time candidates and a decrease of 10 581 part-time candidates,” the department said on Sunday.
The 2015 NSC examination, which is the eighth NSC examinations, will commenced from 26 October to 30 October 2015.
The exams will be administered across 6 797 examination centres in the country with 65 000 Invigilators, 49 900 markers.
The department said that the registration of candidates for the 2015 NSC examinations commenced in March 2015 and the capturing of registration data has been completed by all provincial education departments.
“All provinces have sent out at least one preliminary schedule to schools for checking and verification of the registration data.”
The department noted that a number of candidates who registered for Mathematics has increased from 43 460 in 2014 to 273 348 in 2015.
“The enrolment for Physical Sciences has also increased by 28 293, from 170 857 to 199 150. The overall increase in enrolment figures has resulted in an increase in all subjects,” the department highlighted.
Development of Question Papers
The department said a total of 258 question papers for the November 2015 and March 2016 examinations were set and moderated by the department to ensure a national standard.
“All question papers for the November 2015 examinations were approved by Umalusi. The papers were handed to provincial education departments for printing based on their printing plans.
“Question papers were only handed to provincial departments one week before printing commenced to minimise the security risk. In addition, 67 non-official language question papers that were set by the IEB were also submitted to the PEDs for printing,” the department explained.
Furthermore, adaptation of the question papers for the blind, partially-sighted and deaf candidates (LSEN candidates) has also been finalised.
“Brailling of the adapted papers for the blind has been completed and the papers have been handed to provincial education departments. Printing in provincial education departments commenced on 15 August 2015, as the PEDs have adopted the approach of delaying printing to minimise the security risk.”
The department said it is satisfied with the markers appointed by the provincial education departments and where there were concerns, these were corrected by the provinces concerned. – SAnews.gov.za
