Last Friday we brought you a reminder that only a few days remained for registrations for the Matric exam rewrites, but the Department of Basic Education (DBE) has now extended it.

Originally in-person registration closed on 11th February and online registration closed on 13th February. Both of these have now been pushed back to 18th February.

The announcement of this move comes with no explanation of why the date change has happened.

In the replies to that announcement, however, there is mention that the website to register online is not working, something we also experienced when trying to visit it.

The generic “This site can’t be reached” message is presented when trying to access the registration website here.

The homepage of the DBE website is similarly not accessible at the time of writing.

Those who would like to register for the Matric rewrites taking place in May and June of this year will need to wait for the websites to become operable again or physically apply at an education district office. This latter option should be available though it does mean spending money on travel while a pandemic is still ongoing.

While not mentioned by name, the death or illness of family members or students resulting in the missing of exams or poor performance is mentioned by the DBE as one of the reasons that a rewrite may be applied for.

Students who do not register for whatever reason, and are still unhappy with their results, are still given some alternatives by the department.

“Candidates who do not qualify to write the June NSC examination and have not re-enrolled for the NSC as full-time repeater candidates at a school, have the following options:

• Register as a part-time repeater candidate for the November NSC examinations.
• Register for the Senior Certificate (SC) examination which is a school leaving qualification for adults and out-of school learners who are above 21 years of age
• Alternatively candidates that were not successful in their examinations could consider vocational education and training. There are 50 Public Further Education and Training (FET) colleges across all provinces of South Africa comprising over 300 campuses or teaching sites.”