/ 4 February 2025

Matric assessment institute refutes claims it has unfairly failed learners

The matric class of 2019 has achieved a 98.82% pass rate
Quality assurer Umalusi said it found no discrepancies during its evaluation of the 2024 NSC examinations

The South African Comprehensive Assessment Institute (Sacai) has refuted claims that it has been altering grade 12 national senior certificate (NSC) results after parents and learners registered in online schools expressed dissatisfaction with their final grades. 

“Sacai is not responsible for the SBA [school-based assessment] marks and the standard of marking to determine the SBA marks. We do not alter the SBA marks,” said its chief executive, Chris Klopper. 

He said the institute has followed the national assessment protocol.

“SBAs must be moderated by the department of basic education, the accredited assessment body, and Umalusi. SBAs is the sole domain of Umalusi. They use a specific formula to bring the SBA marks in line with the final exam marks.”

Umalusi is the statutory entity that sets and monitors standards for education and training and is also responsible for accrediting private schools and colleges, and private assessment bodies. 

In a statement, the organisation reiterated its role as a quality assurance for examination question papers and SBAs “to ensure the maintenance of standards of assessment.”

Klopper added that the final grade of 100% is calculated using 75% of the examination mark and a “maximum of 25%” from the SBA. 

But, according to the assessment protocol published by the department of basic education in 2023, the final grade for the senior phase comprises 40% of SBA and 60% of the year-end examination. 

An email sent to a parent by Sacai stated: “If the SBA is more than 10% higher or lower than the exam average, the SBA will be adjusted so that it is in line with the exam average as Umalusi views the NSC exam as the ultimate standard.”

A frustrated parent told the Mail & Guardian: “If there is more than a 10% variance on a raw mark for a subject versus the SBAs, they do not apply the SBAs to the final mark … that is 25% lost.” 

According to Klopper, Umalusi found that Sacai’s “average SBA marks were not deemed to be credible”, therefore the council as a quality assurer has been making amendments to the SBA. 

“Sacai is now blamed, why? I do not know. We are only the messenger of the tiding that the exam preparation was not up to standard,” he argued. 

Umalusi said it had put Sacai under close monitoring for the 2024 academic year after receiving complaints from parents regarding the discrepancies in students’ final mark, but added that there had been no material findings in this regard.

“Sacai, as a private assessment body, operates under its own policies which have

built-in mechanisms for complaints to be lodged whenever a learner or parent is

dissatisfied with assessment outcomes or procedural aspects of the outcomes,” Umalusi said.

Sacai was granted full accreditation status by Umalusi on 1 October 2022 in an attempt to ensure that private education and training institutions “have the capacity to deliver and assess qualifications registered on the general and further education and training qualifications sub-framework and are doing so to the expected standards and quality”.

A total of 5 789 learners from 59 institutions were registered with the entity to administer the 2024 national senior certificate exams. The overall pass rate increased from 72% in 2023 to 73.9% in 2024 with 2 068 distinctions achieved. 

In a video on social media, learners who registered for their grade 12 exams through the University of Cape Town’s online high school said the marks they received from Sacai were “not a true reflection of their ability and are affecting their university applications”.

One of the learners said her subject percentage was 70% but her final marks for the subject were 20% less.

“We had to cram the workload. The final exam questions were difficult and different, and Sacai couldn’t provide answers as to why,” she said in the video. 

Another learner said she received 75% in maths during her preliminary exams in October 2024 but her final grade for the NSC was 40%. 

“I was conditionally accepted at the University of Witwatersrand to study actuarial science but now that dream is out of the window because I have been robbed of my grade,” she said.

Parents and learners have started a petition to demand that Sacai re-mark their 2024 NSC exams without payment. 

“An educational board that also deals with NSC exams under Umalusi [has] continued to not reward students marks they earned over the past decade [and] the reason this is being done is so students are forced to pay to either rewrite or remark,” the petition reads. 

The fee to re-mark an exam script is R590.50 per subject. The fee to view a script is R330.19 per subject and it can only be viewed after it has been re-marked. 

Parents further demanded that the department of basic education investigate Sacai and Umalusi.