File picture
THE COUNCIL for Quality Assurance in General and Further Education and Training (Umalusi) is concerned about the recent protest action in some parts of South Africa that have resulted in some matric pupils either missing the National Senior Certificate examination or writing it later than originally scheduled.
Umalusi said the continuing protests and disruptions impacted the smooth running of the matric exams.
In a recent turn of events, KwaZulu-Natal Education MEC Mbali Frazer was forced to intervene at JE Ndlovu High School in KwaMashu, where a fortnight ago protesting parents were allegedly trying to disrupt the matric exams by preventing staff and learners from entering the school.
In the North West Province arrangements have had to be made for approximately 460 candidates to be compensated for lost time, while just more than 50 candidates in Gauteng could not write the exam due to community protests.
Umalusi spokesperson Biki Lepota reported that in Mpumalanga, 1,130 candidates were prevented from accessing their examination centres where they were scheduled to write either the maths or maths literacy paper 2 exams.
Lepota commended the Department of Basic Education for making arrangements for the affected candidates to be afforded the opportunity to write the exams which were missed due to no fault of their own.
Lepota said he wished to reiterate Umalusi’s position that it discourages communities from using national exams as leverage for their protest actions.
“While Umalusi respects the constitutional right of every citizen to protest, candidates should also be allowed to exercise their right to education by writing their examinations without any form of hindrance,” Lepota explained.
He added that Umalusi was equally concerned about the alleged problematic questions in the maths paper 2 exam paper.
The standard procedure for dealing with such issues was the marking guidelines or memoranda standardisation meetings during which problematic questions were moderated in consideration of candidates’ answers, Lepota said.
“Depending on the magnitude of the problem, the marks allocated to the question/s may be excluded from the question paper’s total marks or alternative responses may be accepted,” he added.
The external moderators of Umalusi attended these meetings and took responsibility for signing off the final marking guidelines after considering the responses of candidates and the deliberations.
“The fine-tuned details of how the concerns were dealt with would be submitted for the consideration of Umalusi at the end of the marking process,” Lepota said.
Umalusi was concerned about the South African Comprehensive Assessment Institute’s (SACAI) premature release of two question papers on November 11 to Umalusi, he said.
These are the physical sciences paper 2 and the life sciences paper 1 which are scheduled to be written on Monday and on November 18.
“It is a requirement for assessment bodies to submit question papers to Umalusi after the writing of each paper.
“This is so that Umalusi can perform its post-examination quality assurance processes prior to the standardisation of results,” he said.
Lepota said that instead of releasing paper 1 of physical sciences, which was written on November 11 the SACAI erroneously released paper 2.
“Since the erroneous release of question papers has the potential to put the credibility of the examination at risk, the SACAI has withdrawn the papers released in error and will substitute them with back-up question papers.”