“The Department of Basic Education (DBE) needs to ensure that we have a better security system and that we are attending to those characters that are undermining us and the National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations.”
These are concerns raised by the National Professional Teacher’s Association of South Africa (Naptosa) executive director Basil Manuel following reports of a second leak in the matric exams, the Physical Science Paper 2.
On Monday evening the DBE announced that the exam paper had been leaked before the commencement of the exam. Grade 12s wrote Physical Sciences (Chemistry) Paper 2 at 9am.
“The reported leak of Physics 2 comes after the department asked the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations, The Hawks, to investigate an earlier incident involving the leaked Maths paper last week,” said the DBE statement.
According to the statement, investigations were at an advanced stage.
“It is unfortunate that people continue to be involved in something like this even though the consequences can be dire. We condemn in the strongest terms the conduct of persons who undermine the integrity of the examination because it causes untold stress on the learners who are looking forward to exiting the schooling system with a pass from an honest examination, not one associated with cheating,” said Education Minister Angie Motshekga.
However; unions are pressuring the department to “clean house”.
“The DBE needs to make a statement about when the rewrite would happen and who will be impacted by it because certainly, we can’t drag the whole country through this again. It is a pity and it is a tragedy that there are these loopholes showing themselves so the department has to ensure that we have better security, the checking systems and that we are attending to those characters that are undermining us, cause certainly, this points to a flaw in the system which hasn’t shown itself before but now that it is showing itself it needs to be addressed,” said Manuel.
Manuel said not only was the credibility of the NSC is put on the line, but the leaking of the exam papers undermined the Class of 2020.
“We are undermining the system and the country, and there are thousands of children now sitting on tenterhooks, first the maths and now the physics. But of course, it’s not about the rewriting - we want to ensure that we don’t punish a whole lot of children if this was contained to a small area,” he said.
The DBE indicated that it was dispatching teams to the different provinces to re-check security system and that the Hawks would get to the bottom of the leaks.
Meanwhile, the DA has called on the department to answer for how the maths papers were leaked.
DA spokesperson on education, Nomsa Marchesi, said the leak has cast a cloud over the integrity of the matric exam process
"To ensure that the rest of the exams are beyond reproach, we need to know how this leak originated to prevent similar leaks in the future," she said.