Matric cheating at 12 KZN schools
For the second year, a group copying scandal has rocked the matric exams in KwaZulu-Natal.
|||Durban - For the second year, a group copying scandal has rocked the matric exams after Umalusi, the exam watchdog, said on Wednesday that 12 schools were implicated in KwaZulu-Natal.
This was out of 26 affected schools in South Africa.
The quality assurer said this was against the background of a “significant drop” in the pass rate.
The remarks were in a statement released on Wednesday.
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga is expected to announce the results on Tuesday.
Seven of the affected schools were in Mpumalanga, six in Gauteng and one in Limpopo.
Last year,
27 of KZN’s schools were found to have taken part in group copying. Pupils who admitted to copying were allowed to rewrite their exams this year and would receive their results with the 800 000 others who sat the exams this year.
Umalusi said the drop in the pass rate from 75.8% last year was because of the “drastic increase” (by 124 000) of pupils writing the exams, a higher standard of questions and expected language proficiency, and increased vigilance for cheating.
Professor John Volmink, Umalusi’s council chairman, said he was unhappy there were unresolved cases from last year’s copying scandal.
The results of those implicated as well as the 19 pupils in Gauteng, Limpopo, and Mpumalanga who were identified as cheats when life sciences exam papers were leaked in November would be “blocked”.
“Further investigations are under way and the results from all the implicated centres will remain blocked. We want to extend a serious warning to those implicated that drastic measures will be taken against them,” he said.
But teacher unions say this is too little too late from the Department of Basic Education and Umalusi with an opportunity to send out a strong message against cheating, having been missed.
National Teachers’ Union deputy president, Allen Thompson, said the group copying would continue because the department had failed to take proper action.
South African Democratic Teachers’ Union KwaZulu-Natal secretary, Nomarashiya Caluza, said it was “embarrassing” that group copying had surfaced again.
“We spoke about this a lot during the course of this year, so this is another tragedy. We will wait for the information to become available,” she said.
On the results, Volmink said 29 subjects had been adjusted upwards – including maths, physical science, economics, English, Afrikaans, Zulu and life sciences.
“In most of the high-enrolment subjects, the increased failure rate compared with 2014 exceeded 3.5%. The drop in performance is particularly pronounced in accounting, geography, history and mathematical literacy,” he said.
Volmink said standards could not be lowered to improve pass rates and the department’s internal moderators had rejected suggestions that the papers were too hard.
“By design, the standard of the papers improved and catered for more challenging questions as compared with 2014. It can be argued that the standard of the question papers was too high this year.
“However these reports all indicate… the papers were fair and set at the correct standard in accordance with the Subject Assessment Guidelines set by the Department of Basic Education,” he said.
Volmink conceded they would consider the “cognitive demand of the papers were a contributing factor to this year’s performance.
“It is for that reason that Umalusi must ensure the standard of the papers is not dropped to improve the failure rate.
“The performance in the National Senior Certificate across all the levels is one of the most critical indicators of system improvement and we will not do ourselves any favours by lowering the bar. Umalusi cannot improve the quality of education on graph paper, this can only happen in the classroom by improving teaching and learning.”
sihle.mlambo@inl.co.za
Daily News
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