Matric pupils at Sekano-Ntoane Secondary School in Soweto prepare to sit for their first Matric exam on 5 November 2020. Picture: Tracy Lee Stark
The council for quality assurance in education, Umalusi, says the 2023 matric results have not been compromised overall despite the number of problems identified.
Umalusi briefed the media on Monday, with the National Senior Certificate (NSC) examination results set to be released later this week.
At a press conference, Umalusi CEO Mafu Rakometsi said the quality assurance council had externally moderated and approved question papers and school-based assessment tasks, among others, prior to the start of the Matric exams.
“Subsequently, Umalusi audited the state of readiness of the system to conduct, administer and manage the examinations,” he said.
Rakometsi said Umalusi also monitored some examination centres, participated in marking guidelines standardisation meetings and conducted verification of quality of marking at selected marking centres during the writing of exams as well as marking phases.
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“Post the marking processes, the marks achieved by learners were submitted to Umalusi for standardisation purposes.”
All the processes, the Umalusi executive highlighted, were conducted in public and private assessment bodies including the Department of Basic Education, Department of Higher Education And Training, Independent Examinations Board (IEB) and the South African Comprehensive Assessment Institute (SACAI).
The Umalusi CEO revealed that load shedding, community protests and cheating were identified as some of the factors that could have negatively affected the exams.
“Regarding community protests, we have received no reports about serious cases of community protests that may have prevented candidates from writing the examinations.
“We are happy to report that all assessment bodies heeded the advice given to make alternative arrangements for the supply of power during the writing of examinations to mitigate the effect of load shedding.
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“Umalusi appreciates the efforts of all the four assessment bodies for ensuring that candidates were shielded from all forms of hindrances. That gives the assurance that the integrity and credibility of the 2023 end of year national examinations were not compromised,” Rakometsi said.
Rakometsi, however, expressed concern over some candidates writing their exams at unaccredited centres and privite institutions.
He urged the candidates to visit Umalusi’s website to check if they were accredited.
Umalusi also highlighted another area of concern, which was poor printing quality and errors in question papers.
In one example, poor printing quality affected questions worth at least 60 marks of the civil technology papers in Limpopo for both English and Afrikaans versions.
“Aside from printing quality, we would like to raise translation quality as something that needs careful attention. Due to poor quality of translation from English to Afrikaans, candidates could not respond to Questions three to five and three to six worth three marks in the Afrikaans version of Geography Paper 1 of the Department of Basic Education,” he said.
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“Equally concerning is the fact that candidates who wrote IsiZulu first additional language Paper 2 under SACAI had not been informed that the new poems and short stories would be introduced for the November 2023 examinations. Consequently, the candidates had been prepared for the examinations based on outdated set works,” the Umalusi CEO continued.
Rakometsi indicated that the questions affected by these errors were excluded from the marking process to mitigate the impact on the performance of candidates.
“The marks achieved were upscaled using conversion tables. Notwithstanding that, Umalusi urges all role players to put in place stringent measures to prevent the recurrence of errors like these that I have referred to.
“This is because being fair to candidates means, among other things, being able to see and address any factors that may result in candidates performing poorly due to no faults of their own.”
While there were no examination papers leaks, Rakometsi further pointed out that the council was worried about the unresolved cases of pupils implicated in irregularities such as group copying.
“Umalusi is seriously concerned about the group copying cases that had been detected by the [Department of Basic Education] which involves 945 NSC candidates.
“These cases are not yet resolved because the numbers are still being verified. Of the total, 763 cases. which is 80.7%, were detected in KwaZulu-Natal and 164 cases, which constitutes 17.7%, were detected in Mpumalanga.”
Despite the issues, the credibility and integrity of the Matric exams and results were not compromised, according to the Umalusi CEO.
The Matric results will be released by Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga on 18 January.
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