File picture: Oupa Mokoena/African News Agency (ANA)
THE BASIC Education Department has warned that chaos would unfold in South Africa if its planned rewriting of the two matric exams whose question papers were leaked does not go ahead.
This comes as the department is at loggerheads with unions and Cosas opposing the compulsory rewriting of the mathematics paper 2 and physical sciences paper 2 announced by Minister Angie Motshekga, which is planned for December 15 and 17 respectively.
Department spokesperson Elijah Mhlanga said matric learners had to get back to the exam room as quality assurer Umalusi made it clear it would not approve the outcomes of the papers as it deemed the exams compromised.
“The risk is that if they were not to rewrite and Umalusi says ‘no, we cannot attach our signature to these results because we don’t believe that they were fair or credible’, that would throw the whole country into chaos,” Mhlanga said.
Mhlanga said failure to rewrite the exams at the specified dates would mean that it would have to still be written at a later stage and this would potentially jeopardise next year’s academic calendar.
This comes as Sadtu is taking the department to court in a bid to interdict it from compelling matric pupils to rewrite the exams.
The union was on Monday expected to file papers with the North Gauteng High Court, but the department was adamant it was going ahead with preparations for the re-examinations.
Mhlanga said those who opposed the plan would have to work hard to convince the courts of their suggestions – that not all those learners who had written the exams had to be compelled to repeat the exams as it was impossible to identify who did not have access to the leaked question papers.