Matrics warned to expect "extremely tough" exam papers

JOHANNESBURG. South Africa's education department has warned matrics to expect an exceptionally tough final examination this year, saying that they would have to spell their names correctly on their scripts in order to pass. According to a spokesman, the new standardised papers would "separate the wheat from the sheep and the chaff from the goats".

Education Ministry spokesman Aristotle Nkosi said that the more demanding exam papers had come as a shock to many in the education system, especially teachers who had not yet covered correct spelling of names in the syllabus.

He confirmed that the country's largest labour unions were threatening legal action against the Ministry of Education and had described the new exam papers as "rasist and diskriminatory towards teechers" on the grounds that many of their members had not yet learned to spell their own names correctly and were being placed in traumatic situations for which they had not been trained, such as having to teach children in a classroom.

However he said the new exams were part of the Ministry's effort to produce young people able to compete in a globalised world.

"We want to send a clear message out to the giants of the developing world," said Nkosi.

"We want them to recognise the a South African education is not something to be trifled with, and that we are producing cheap labour more quickly and with a smaller investment than they are.

"We want them to know that wherever there's a Chinese person shovelling coal onto a Liberian cargo ship, there'll be a South African shovelling coal twice as fast.

"We want them to know that wherever there's an Indian squatting over a fire, burning computer components to extract mercury and lead, there'll be a South African squatting over a bigger, better fire, extracting more mercury and lead, more cheaply."

Nkosi confirmed that subjects would no longer be examined on the Standard- and Lower Grade, but he was quick to reassure pupils who had been studying subjects on these grades that their talents would not be wasted.

"You form a vital part of our country's future, whether as ballot checkers in the next general election, or as data capturers at Home Affairs, or as public relations officers at the 2010 World Cup," he said.

Meanwhile the Ministry has confirmed that senior officials were unable to attend the briefing as they were attending their children's cello recitals and polo matches at various private schools in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg.

Source: http://www.hayibo.com/