In common with other schools across the country, UCT Online High School’s 2024 Matric  results were released on Wednesday 15 January. Following the release of our results, a number of our learners and their families have expressed disappointment with their grades. We understand how distressing it is for learners who have received grades that are inconsistent with their hard work, engagement through our online campus and attendance at live workshops with our Subject Specialists.

The paragraphs that follow set out what we are doing to support our learners who are in this position.

UCT Online High School (UCT OHS) was founded as a partnership between the University of Cape Town and the Valenture Institute, and admitted its first learners in January 2021. The University of Cape Town and UCT OHS operate as independent, separate entities in terms of  the applicable legislative and regulatory frameworks. UCT OHS teaches the National Senior Certificate CAPS curriculum, and meets and matches the requirements and standards expected of any other school preparing learners to write their Matric examinations. This includes the setting and grading of the School Based Assessments (SBAs) that make up to, but not a guaranteed, 25% of the final grades awarded for the NSC. All marking of SBA papers is carried out by qualified teachers who are experts in the relevant subject, and the same team grades the preliminary examination paper, which are set by our examining body to prepare learners for their final examinations. We are confident that the grading and moderation of our School Based Assessments was thorough and fair, and we can confirm that all SBA results were submitted on time to our examining body, as is required by the relevant regulations.

In addition, and specifically for our Matric classes, we provide a rich and comprehensive suite of additional learning resources. Access to these additional resources is included in our standard monthly fee, and there is no reason why any learner should not be able to take advantage of these preparatory opportunities. These additional resources include a series of preparation workshops for all subjects offered by UCT Online High School, run by our Subject Specialists and augmented by additional resources. We also offer all our Grade 12 learners the opportunity to attend our Matric Masterclass Programme, in which our Subject Specialists guide learners through sets of previous SACAI examination papers.These workshops provided valuable insights into the structure and expectations of the final exams.

Our examining body is the South African Comprehensive Assessment Institute (SACAI) which is accredited by Umalusi. SACAI is solely responsible for setting the final Matric papers, for putting in place and administering examination centres across the country, for grading all examination scripts, and for moderating the grades that are awarded. SACAI has clearly defined procedures in place for those who are dissatisfied with the grades they have received and UCT OHS has no power to intervene in individual cases. Our responsibility is to guide and encourage our learners to approach SACAI in the prescribed manner to request a review or a re-mark of examination papers where they believe that this is called for. Given SACAI’s workload at this time, these processes will take some weeks to conclude; we are closely monitoring the progress of these individual representations, and will provide learners and their families with further advice where this is required.

In addition we, as a school, have noted systemic inconsistencies between some of our learners’ School Based Assessments and preliminary examination results, and the final results announced for our 2024 Matric cohort. These inconsistencies relate to specific subjects, and may have adversely affected the grades awarded to a minority of our Matric cohort. In order to raise and resolve these issues, we held a mutually constructive meeting with the SACAI management team on Wednesday 22 January, at which we identified and agreed on clear next steps with further constructive engagement to follow. We are working hard with SACAI to resolve these issues as rapidly as possible so that any learner who has been adversely affected can receive the grade that they deserve.

We understand the distress and anxiety of learners who have not received the grades that they anticipated. Their situation is being exacerbated by comments across social media, many of which are based on partial or incorrect information, and some that are egregiously misleading. It is also important to stress that a large majority of our Matrics achieved the outcomes that we predicted from our detailed analysis of the data that we collect on learner engagement, tests integrated into our curriculum, School Based Assessments and preliminary examinations. 

These outcomes included:

• 566 distinctions across multiple subjects which include Mathematics, Physical Sciences, Accounting and Economics.
• Top-performing learners achieving an overall mark average of over 80%.
• The award of the highest grade for Physical Science for the 2024 SACAI national cohort.
• One of our learners was ranked in the SACAI top three nationally, receiving six distinctions.