1. The Council of Education Ministers (CEM) has endorsed the merging of the National Senior Certificate (NSC) supplementary examination with the Senior Certificate (SC) examination, with effect from 2019.

2. This implies that as from 2018, Grade 12 learners who write the National Senior Certificate (NSC) examination in November 2018, and who would have qualified to write the supplementary examination in February/March 2019, will write the equivalent of the supplementary examination in June 2019.

3. The main purpose of the supplementary examination is to afford borderline learners that are short of one or two subjects, or short of one subject to gain entry into higher education or a specific occupation, a second chance.

4. The observations with regards to the supplementary examination over the last few years have been as follows:

  1. The short period between the beginning of January and mid-February that learners have to prepare for the supplementary examination, is not adequate and hence, performance in the supplementary examinations has been very poor.

  2. A large number of learners do not arrive to write the examinations – as high as 50% per subject. This results in huge amounts of wasteful expenditure, given the amount of resources that go into the preparations for these examinations.
5. The advantages of merging the supplementary examination with the June examinations are as follows:

  1. Learners will have more time to prepare for the June examinations. This will allow for improved performance and will reduce the percentage of learners who do not arrive to write the examinations.

  2. The May/June Senior Certificate Examination will afford "open access" to learners since there would be no restrictions to writing the June examinations, as is the case with the current supplementary examination. Therefore learners that failed to meet the requirements in the November examination, as well as those learners who passed but seek to improve their performance, may register to write the June examination.
6. Principals are requested to inform all current Grade 11 learners who will be affected by this new dispensation in 2019 of the contents of this minute.


SIGNED: PAD BEETS
DEPUTY DIRECTOR-GENERAL: CURRICULUM AND ASSESSMENT MANAGEMENT
DATE: 2017:10:10