Durban - The KwaZulu-Natal Education Department says it is ready for the 2011 National Senior Certificate Examination, with great importance placed quality invigilation and prevention of irregularities.
"The provincial examination and assessment directorate have conducted extensive workshops for district officials in preparation for the training of chief invigilators across the province," said Education MEC Senzo Mchunu on Wednesday.
All staff members who will be involved in the conducting of the examination will sign a confidentiality clause relating to all classified information around the exam.
The security advisory directorate within the department has also joined other agencies to enforce an elaborate plan to secure the entire examination process.
Mchunu said the monitoring of examination will be a three-fold process.
The first part will be monitoring of the printing process by management of the chief directorate. The second part will be the monitoring of the delivery of question papers by the examination administration and assessment staff.
Monitoring of the conduct of the examination by district, province and national Departments of Education will be the third activity.
The provincial department said 127 044 full-time and 23 342 part-time repeat candidates had registered for the examinations, which is scheduled to start on 17 October. The exams will conclude on 1 December.
"This is but one of the ways to show that we do care [including] for those who did not make it in their previous examination sitting, if they still want to improve their marks and increase their chance of accessing institutions of higher learning or other fields in their future careers," said Mchunu.
Of the 512 029 candidates nationally, KwaZulu-Natal contributes just over a quarter of learners who will sit for their National Senior Certificate examination.
"This places a huge responsibility on our shoulders of ensuring that learners are thoroughly prepared and ready before this very important day arrives," said the MEC.
There are papers for the morning and afternoon sessions. Morning papers will start at 9am and afternoon papers will commence at 2pm.
Over 9 000 markers will be appointed to mark scripts across the 29 marking centres. Marking of the papers will start on 6 December and end on 15 December.
Learners will get their results on 5 January 2012.
