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Johannesburg - Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said on Sunday that preparations for the national senior certificate 2014 examinations in all nine provinces had been completed.
A total of 688 660 candidates had registered to write the examination this year, of which 550 127 were full-time candidates and 138 550 were part-time, she said in a statement.
"These candidates will write their examination across 6 740 examination centres where invigilation will be conducted by an estimated 65 000 invigilators who will be responsible for ensuring that the examination is written under conditions that are free of any malpractice."
Motshekga was addressing the outcomes of a council of education ministers (CEM) meeting. It is a body that represents all nine education MECs and the basic education ministry.
Integrity
She said final preparations were being made for the seven million answer scripts to be collected on the day the examination would be written. They would then be placed in storage and moved to the 117 marking centres across the country for marking by a selected team of 41 564 markers, she said.
Marking would begin on 1 December.
"The [department] together with the provinces will strengthen its monitoring of the 2014 NSC examination processes to ensure that the integrity and credibility of this exit examination is upheld at every examination centre."
She said she would officially announce the examination results on 5 January 2015 and the results would be released the following day.
Motshekga said a number of community protests had had a negative impact on education in areas, including Kuruman in the Northern Cape, Grabouw in the Western Cape and Sterkspruit in the Eastern Cape, among others.
Correct subject
"The meeting strongly condemned these actions and is urging communities to take ownership of schools and protect them no matter what," she said.
"Education must be prioritised above all else as it is the greatest weapon that can be used to ensure radical social economic transformation and change the lives of our people."
Motshekga said in order for the curriculum to be effectively delivered to pupils, teachers had to be profiled to ensure the correct teacher was teaching the correct subject, she said.
She said 75% of teachers had been profiled in terms of their professional information, subjects taught and subjects qualified to teach.
"Weekly reports from all provinces are submitted on progress."
The pilot for the incremental introduction of African languages (IIAL) was under way, she said.
"Out of our more than 25 000 schools in the system, 3 700 currently do not offer an African language and we will roll out this programme to those schools in grade one from next year and those that participated in the pilot will continue in grade two."
