Eastern Cape pupils will be first to sit for prelims starting on 25 August, and the last province to begin will be KZN on 8 September
Several provinces will begin their Grade 12 preparatory examinations later this month, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) has confirmed.
The exams are commonly referred to as “prelims”, are managed by provincial education departments and serve as a critical trial run before the final National Senior Certificate (NSC) exams at the end of the year.
Provincial starting dates vary
While Eastern Cape pupils will be the first to sit for prelims starting on 25 August, the last province to begin will be KwaZulu-Natal on 8 September.
Exam periods will wrap up by late September to early October in all provinces.
The department encouraged pupils to treat the preparatory exams seriously, as the results help identify learning gaps and readiness for the final NSC exams.
Here are the starting dates:
- Eastern Cape: 25 August – 23 September;
- North West: 27 August – 25 September;
- Gauteng: 29 August – 26 September;
- Northern Cape: 29 August – 30 September;
- Limpopo: 2 September – 26 September;
- Mpumalanga: 2 September – 30 September;
- Free State: 2 September – 2 October;
- Western Cape: 5 September – 26 September; and
- KwaZulu-Natal: 8 September – 2 October.
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Not a national exam
The DBE emphasised that the preparatory examinations are not national assessments.
“The Preparatory Examination is not a national examination but is managed by the nine provincial education departments,” the department said in a statement.
This means that, unlike the NSC exams, which are set and standardised nationally, the prelims are overseen by each province.
“In most cases the question papers are set by the provincial head office, with some of the question papers set by individual schools,” the DBE explained.
In the Western Cape, all papers are set at school level, while in provinces where papers are set centrally, they are printed, packed, and distributed on the morning of each exam.
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Marking and results
Marking is also a provincial process, with teachers grading scripts at school level using province-wide marking guidelines.
“Marks are captured on the South African School Administration System (SASAMS) in eight provinces and on CEMIS [Centralised Education Management Information System] in the Western Cape,” said the department.
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