Umalusi, the national education quality assurance body, has approved the release of the November 2023 national Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations.
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Umalusi council chairperson Professor Yunus Ballim says the Exco of Council concluded that the examinations were ‘administered largely [per] the regulations [on] the conduct, administration and management of the [NSC] examinations’.
The announcement was made during a media briefing on Monday after several irregularities were discovered during the writing and marking process. However, Ballim says it was found that these ‘irregularities’ were ‘not systemic and therefore did not compromise the overall credibility and integrity’.
‘In respect of identified irregularities, the DBE is required to block the results of all candidates implicated in irregularities including the candidates who are implicated in the alleged acts of dishonesty pending the outcome of the Department of Basic Education (DBE) investigations and verification by Umalusi.’
‘Umalusi is concerned about the recurring instances of printing and packaging errors in question papers and the ongoing practice of group copying. The DBE is required to address the directors for compliance and improvement highlighted in the quality assurance of assessment report and to submit an improvement plan by 15 March 2024.’
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The general results are scheduled for release tomorrow, 19 January.
According to Umalusi CEO, Dr Mafu Rakometsi, some of the challenges that learners faced during examinations included:
- A printing error that affected a question worth three marks in the Physical Sciences Paper Two,
- The same paper had missing grid lines in a question worth six marks in the North West,
- Major printing errors affected questions in both the English and Afrikaans translations, worth more than 60 marks in Civil Science, as well as 31 and 14 marks in Construction and more than 20 marks in Woodworking,
- Poor translation quality affected two questions worth three marks in the Afrikaans-translated version of Geography Paper 1,
- The Mathematical Literacy Paper 1 and Mandarin Paper 1 had cultural and political errors,
- Furthermore, at least 64 candidates who wrote the isiZulu First Additional Language Paper 2 were not informed that new poems and short stories would be used for the examinations. As a result, candidates were prepared on outdated set works.
‘To mitigate the possible impact of the above errors on [the] performance of candidates, the questions concerned were excluded from the marking process and the marks achieved upscaled using conversion tables,’ says Rakometsi.
‘Notwithstanding that, Umalusi urges all role players to put in stringent measures to prevent the recurrence of errors like these. This is because being fair to candidates means, among other things, being able to foresee and address any factor that may result in candidates performing poorly due to no fault of their own.’
Rakometsi told Bizcommunity that Umalusi is ‘seriously concerned about the group copying cases’, which involve 945 NSC candidates. ‘These cases are not yet resolved because the numbers are still being verified. Of the total, 763 cases…were detected in KwaZulu-Natal and 164 cases…were detected in Mpumalanga.’
‘Umalusi is extremely encouraged by the fact that there were no detected cases of paper leakages. No papers were leaked in these examinations and…the examinations have therefore not been compromised in terms of their credibility and integrity.’
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