IEB Matric tuition

The Independent Examinations Board (IEB) is the assessment body used by a large number of South Africa’s independent schools, including many in and around the Upper Highway. IEB learners finish school with the same qualification as learners at public schools, the National Senior Certificate (NSC), and study the same national curriculum. The difference is that the IEB sets and marks its own examination papers.

Much of the content will be familiar to parents: comprehension, poetry, a novel, a Shakespeare play and essay writing. What is distinctive is the format of the papers and the way they are marked.

What the English papers look like

IEB English Home Language is examined in two three-hour papers, each worth 100 marks. In recent years Paper 1 has combined comprehension, a summary, a question on a prescribed poem, an unseen poem, a visual and critical literacy section built around advertisements, cartoons or other visual texts, and a short language section. Paper 2 is built around literature and writing. Its compulsory first question is a Shakespeare essay, followed by a question on a novel and a section of transactional writing.

The marking guidelines are specific. The top band of the rubric for the Shakespeare essay asks for “academic rigour” and “a strong individual voice”. A learner who knows the prescribed play thoroughly can still score poorly if the essay lacks a clear argument.

Afrikaans at IEB level

At English-medium schools in KwaZulu-Natal, the additional language is commonly Afrikaans or isiZulu. IEB Afrikaans First Additional Language has two papers of two and a half hours each. The first covers reading comprehension, advertisements and cartoons, a summary, prepared and unprepared poetry, and language skills such as sentence and word structures. The second covers literature, usually a prescribed novel or short stories, and transactional writing such as a dialogue or an email.

For many learners, Afrikaans is their lowest mark. Common causes include grammar that was not fully learned in the earlier grades, a limited vocabulary, and too little practice writing under time pressure. Each of these can be worked on directly.

Why the whole year counts

An IEB matric’s final mark in each subject is made up of the November examination and school-based assessment (SBA), the tests, tasks and examinations completed at school during Grade 12. The IEB states that school-based assessment makes up 25% of the final mark. By October, most of a learner’s school-based assessment for the year has already been completed.

Languages also carry particular weight in the qualification. Every NSC candidate must pass two official languages, one of them at Home Language level.

How Amanda works with matrics

Amanda Ceglowski has taught since 1976. For much of that time she has prepared learners from schools across the Upper Highway and beyond, including Kearsney College, St Mary’s DSG, Thomas More College, Curro Hillcrest Christian Academy, Waterfall College, St Charles College, Epworth and Westville Boys’ High School, for their final examinations. She holds two honours degrees, both awarded cum laude: one in English Language and Literature and one in inclusive education. She was head of English at St Mary’s DSG in Kloof within two years of joining its staff.

Her matric lessons cover the prescribed texts and the skills the IEB papers test. What each learner works on depends on their goal. Some need to secure a pass or lift a weak subject; others are already doing well and want to raise a B aggregate to an A. Lessons might include, for example:

• planning and writing a Shakespeare essay, with a clear line of argument and well-chosen quotation
• answering unseen poetry and visual literacy questions, which cannot be memorised and must be practised
• Afrikaans language structures, revised until they are automatic
• timed practice on past papers, marked against the IEB’s own rubrics, with written feedback

In IEB English Home Language, all candidates in a given year study the same prescribed Shakespeare play and poems, so matrics from different schools can study them together. Some of Amanda’s matrics work in groups, where they hear each other’s questions and compare their readings of a text. Others need specialised individual tuition, for example because they are catching up after a difficult year, and have one-to-one lessons.