The Department of Education has decided to scrap matric supplementary exams and replace them with a second, fully fledged exam in the middle of the year.
Spokesperson Elijah Mhlanga says they have been monitoring the supplementary exams for some time.
He says they have discovered that a large number of those who register to write do not show up and of those who do show up, many don't pass the exams.
Read: Plans to scrap matric supplementary exams
That meant we were losing money, time and resources because we are not making the improvements we would like to see, so we felt we needed to come up with another way of creating access to people.
— Elijah Mhlanga, Spokesperson for the Department of Basic Education
Mhlanga says the old system allowed those who have failed to register only two subjects, meaning that if they failed more than two subject they had to seat again for those subjects.
But with the new system they will be able to register and write all the subjects they have failed.
The new system will be implemented from 2019 onwards.
To hear the rest of the conversation with Elijah Mhlanga, listen below:
This article first appeared on CapeTalk : Ed Dept scraps supplementary exams for matriculants