Ngwako Modjadji
The South African Certification Council (Safcert) has asked to meet Minister of Education Kader Asmal in the wake of a spate of leaks during this year’s matric exams.
The leaks have prompted Safcert an independent oversight body established by an Act of Parliament to take a number of unprecedented measures to ensure the integrity and credibility of the matric examinations.
Papers in mathematics, physical science and biology, which were reportedly leaked, were set nationally for the first time this year.
A spokesperson for the minister of education, Molatwane Likhethe, says the ministry’s concern is how the learners manage to get the papers before they are written.
The Gauteng Department of Education last month prevented pupils allegedly in possession of the mathematics paper from continuing with their final examinations. MEC for Education Ignatius Jacobs announced that such pupils were barred from continuing to write exams and that the results of the papers they had written would be nullified.
Now, for the first time, Safcert will have access to police reports about alleged leaks.
This year external moderators will look at the actual scripts instead of simply monitoring the marking and the entering of marks.
Another unprecedented step will be to develop a statistical formula to help pick up irregularities.
Exam leaks are not the only problems likely to tarnish the credibility of this year’s matric exams. In Mpumalanga, a top education official has been accused of accepting bribes of R450 each to manipulate the results of certain candidates. The matter has been referred to the police and investigations are continuing.
Before the start of exams, Asmal and the nine MECs for education promised a 5% increase in the matriculation pass rate. Last year saw an unprecedented 9 percentage point improvement, from 48,9% in 1999 to a 57,9% pass rate.