NewsBreak popular with matrics

Johannesburg, 05 Jan 2006

The NewsBreak service for the final matric results has been described as a success, with about 250 000 students making use of it out of the 508 363 full-time candidates who wrote matric exams last year.

Now in its fourth year of operation, mobile news service NewsBreak is hosted by the SABC to provide news updates, sports, weather and financial indicators to mobile phones.

The SABC worked with a private-public partnership involving Vodacom, Marketel, the Department of Education, the State IT Agency and Nedbank Dezign Banking.

Hayden Schwarz, MD of Marketel, explains that students could either SMS or phone through their student numbers to obtain their results during the call or via return SMS.

"All calls to our service are logged in detail. This provided us with information about the call itself, the user`s interaction on the line, and any problems encountered by the service in handling the call. We were, therefore, able to determine the outcome of calls," he says.

"This was operationally our most successful year to date. All results were available on all mobile services at the time of the embargo being lifted. Although our call rates remained steady, we saw a decrease in the amount of time the average user spent on the service and an increase in the number of successful calls."

Deadlines met

All provinces set a date and time on which results could be released to the public, Schwarz notes. For the Western Cape this was 6am on 30 December and for all the other provinces it was between 6am and 10am on 29 December.

"The embargoes are important since schools need to ensure there is someone available to counsel students within two hours of the release. Every year a number of other services/publications release the results prior to the embargo being lifted and this creates a perception among the public that the release times are earlier than they really are. This also affects perceptions of our service," says Schwarz.

"Callers using the service on the day would get their results on the line (during the call or by return SMS). Users who pre-registered, for whom we had results available, received their results within two-and-a-half hours of the embargo time. Callers for whom we did not have results were notified accordingly within three hours of us receiving the last province`s results (Western Cape)," he says.

Results not available

There were a number of reasons why results for some learners were not available, says Schwarz. These include entering less than six subjects via the SMS, late grade changes, papers not marked, and oral or practical marks that were not submitted.

"A suspected irregularity, a late entry on an immigrant who has not reached the deadlines and/or requirements laid out by the department, a student who has not achieved a pass at the time of publication, or even a technical error may cause a candidate not to receive his/her matric results.

"We are also reliant on users entering the correct information (exam and ID number) into the system. The service plays each entry back to the caller and asks them to confirm it to ensure maximum success rates in receiving results. We do, however, receive a significant percentage of incorrect ID and/or exam numbers on the service," he concludes.