YOU, Huisgenoot and Drum magazines have rallied to the cause of helping South Africa’s matrics improve their results. Media24’s group of family magazines are publishing a series of exam aid booklets for pupils.
Nerisa Coetzee, associate publisher of Media24’s Weekly Magazines division, told TheMediaOnline that poor national results in ‘difficult’ subjects inspired the project.
“ We started thinking of what we can do to help grade 12 learners. We decided to focus on exam preparation for the end of year exams. There is a shortage of papers since exams are being written nationally – all the past papers from the Department of Education (DOE) can be downloaded from their website.
“We believe that the more practice one get in doing different kinds of questions, the better-prepared learners will be. These magazines will also be very affordable compared to other exam guides or text books,” she said.
The series of four magazines will each contain six brand new exam papers compiled by senior teachers from across the country that all have experience in compiling both provincial and national exam papers. They will concentrate on mathematics (available at the end of April); physical science (available at the end of May); life sciences (available at the end of June) and accounting (available at the end of July).
Coetzee said the Media24 Weekly Magazines initiative was fortunate to have a specialist on its editorial team. “Rikus van Rooy focuses specifically on educational projects. We also called in the advice of many teachers and other experts on the curriculum,” she said.
It will not be a one-off affair. Instead, the group intends expanding its educational publishing to include other grades. “Together with the series for Grade 12 students, we are also launching Huisgenoot Skooltake / You School Projects end May that will help Grade 4-7 learners with their school projects.”
They are, however, looking for advertisers and sponsors to join them in their quest to help learners reach their full potential. “We had positive feedback from the advertising community on the project. We will measure our success by reaching as many students as possible and hope that the content of the magazine results in them achieving better results in their final examination,” Coetzee said.
Each magazine also contains the full memorandums that will help with final preparation for internal exams as well as the NSS exams at the end of the year. The days when Grade 12 learners constantly worked through the same exam papers are over.
The magazine will be available in shops at a reasonable R24.95 each. Schools who order 50 copies or more will have their order delivered free of charge.
If you can’t find a copy of You Exam Aid: Maths in your local shop, SMS the words YOU MATHS, the shop name and the town to 36487 or call 0860-103-686 to order. Each SMS costs R1. The series is also available in Afrikaans under the Huisgenoot banner.
