This year’s matric learners are getting ready to sit for their upcoming final exams. While there are expected pressures of writing matric, these pressures are amplified by certain factors out of their control.
The daunting matric final exams are fast approaching, and grade 12 learners across the country are doing their best to adequately prepare, but uncontrollable challenges threaten to destabilize study environments and derail their preparations.
Writing matric is something almost everyone endures, and has become a sort of “rite of passage” in South Africa, says Professor Elizabeth Henning, Director of the Centre of Education Practice Research at the University of Johannesburg.
Henning cites support at home, good food, and sufficient amounts of sleep as keys to successfully making it through this exam season.
“If you don’t sleep enough, your brain doesn’t have the opportunity to process what you’ve been studying during the day, and it’s a 24-hour cycle, so every night they [the matrics] have to go to bed early,” explains the Professor.
However, in recent years, going through school has become increasingly difficult for the youth, with Henning also acknowledging the various external factors that can’t be as easily controlled as getting to bed sooner.
Loss of learning from the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw adjustments being made to how the country’s youth continues to attend school, as well as the frustrations of load-shedding (which prohibits studying during the night if there is no electricity), have made it more difficult to pass grade 12 than it was for previous generations.
Henning praises South Africa’s youth for their resilience to adjust during these challenges, noting that as frustrating as it is, all learners can really do is deal with it.
“In terms of the pandemic, the learning loss (not just of the matriculants this year, but of all people in school and at other institutions, and in the workplace, we’ve lost a lot; but at the same time we’ve also gained a lot. We’ve learned so much about the tiny tools of resilience, and what to do when this goes wrong.
And it’s usually unexpectedly, apart from the fact that there are load shedding schedules, [but] it also happens that things break down and that things go wrong.
I have a suspicion that the matriculants of this year may have more resilience than those of five years ago because they’ve had to learn in the most challenging conditions,” says Henning.
Matric exams are expected to start on 25 October 2023, and have been given the stamp of approval by Umalusi, the Council for Quality Assurance in General and Further Education and Training.
