Pretoria - Mpumalanga Education MEC Reginah Mhaule has extended her best wishes to learners in Grades 1 to 6 and 9, who will start writing their Annual National Assessments (ANAs) today.
The ANAs, which will take place from 18 - 21 September, is a standardised assessment which serves as an instrument to diagnose and measure the progress made by the Department of Basic Education in attaining its goals set in Action 2014 - Towards Schooling 2015.
Nationally, more than seven million learners across more than 20 000 schools will write tests in languages and mathematics, while in Mpumalanga, 591 050 learners will be sitting for the assessment.
Mhaule requested parents and communities in general to support their children as they participate in the assessment.
"This is the only tool that helps the department to assess progress made in improving learner performance in all grades," said Mhaule, adding that the provincial department had set a target of 49% in both numeracy and literacy for this assessment.
Exemplar Assessments Material has been supplied to schools to assist learners to prepare for the national set common assessments.
The department will centrally moderate a sample of three scripts per class to assess the quality of marking that was done at school level.
Grades 1, 2, 4 and 5 will be sitting for their language paper on 18 September, whilst Grades 3, 6 and 9 write their language papers on 19 September.
Grades 1, 2, 4 and 5 will on 20 September sit again for mathematics, while Grades 3, 6 and 9 will write their mathematics paper on 21 September. The papers are one hour and two hours respectively, depending on the grade.
