This English exam paper, she take the cake

A corrected version of the paper.

A corrected version of the paper.

Published May 8, 2013

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Johannesburg - “Instruction to learners Read all the intructions carefully. Answere on the answer sheet provide. Write neatly.”

No, these are not our typos.

They are instructions on an English Home Language question paper for Grade 7 pupils, which was set by the Mpumalanga Department of Education’s Nkangala district.

The assessment paper, which was distributed to schools in March, is littered with spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and countless other blunders.

 

The first section of the paper is a comprehension test based on a short story titled Bees In the Jam.

The first page of Bees In the Jam, which runs over three pages, is not even broken up into paragraphs.

It starts off like this:

“One day I returned at the camp to find Isaiah sitting at some distance crying. ‘The bees, she got the jam.’ He had been stung in many places. While he was up at the Windmill doing some laundry and swimming, a bee has discovered some open tin of fig jam in the tent. She had made a beeline for her hive, and returned several co-workers. On the principle of finders keepers, they believed that the fig was theirs, and made these quite clear to Isaiah. As I has been guilty of leaving the jam leaving the jam in the tent, I felt in duty bound to get that tin of jam out way before others returned returned.”

 

In case you’re wondering, the repeated words are as they appear in the question paper.

Mpumalanga education spokesman Jasper Zwane said they were aware of the question paper, and the department had dealt with the issue.

He said the official who had set the paper has been “removed from performing that task” and given a warning.

He could not say how many schools had used the question paper.

Zwane said the department had since set up a team of specialists whose duty was to go through district-set question papers and ensure that this did not happen again.

He added that before this, question papers set by districts had been approved by district officials themselves.

Now all question papers from all the districts must go through the team of specialists before being sent to schools.

Schools that perform well academically are not obliged to use district-set assessment papers, but schools that perform poorly, with a pass rate below 50 percent, have to use district-set assessments.

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