TUESDAY 11.30AM:
A STALLHOLDER at the Fresh Produce Market in Pretoria has discovered cardboard boxes among the stalls, containing 75 matric biology exam papers. The education department seals on the box have been broken.
Police are investigating the discovery, but education department officials — embarrassed by yet another exam fraud discovery — say the papers were stolen only after the exam was completed yesterday and that they are surplus exams which have not been used.
The mystery remains why exam papers should surface at a fruit market. Since no break-ins have been reported at the storerooms where exam papers are kept, officials inside the department are considered the most likely suspects.
MONDAY 2.30AM:
SIXTEEN youths arrested on Sunday when found selling biology matric exam papers in Lenasia, near Johannesburg, have been released in time to write their Monday exams. But they will still be expected to appear in court on Wednesday to face fraud charges.
The Gauteng matric biology exam went ahead because, said an Education Department spokesman, the leak was limited. It is not yet clear whether the exams on sale where the same as the ones written on Monday. Earlier, Gauteng education MEC Mary Metcalfe thanked police and hailed the arrests as an important breakthrough in the investigation into exam paper leaks.
Metcalfe, who promised to tighten exam security this year after a string of fraud cases during last year’s Gauregn matric exams, has again been embarrassed by at least three suspected cases of fraud during the current exams.