Durban - As Grade 12 pupils sit for their first major exam on Wednesday, teachers’ unions have cautioned pupils not to be tempted to cheat as that would affect the credibility of the exams.
Matric pupils write the English Home Language and First Additional Language Paper One on Wednesday.
Last year, 12 KwaZulu-Natal schools were implicated in group copying and their results were withheld while investigations were conducted.
The Education Department said it wanted a major improvement this year after the pass rate in KZN dropped by 9 percentage points to 60.7% last year. The department has predicted that the pass rate will increase by 10 percentage points.
The SA Democratic Teachers Union warned in a recent statement that teachers would be assessed on how they carried out their invigilating duties.
“We call on all our members to refuse and not be tempted to assist pupils as they answer the exam questions.”
The union said a lot of effort had been put into preparing pupils for the exams, including some schools having weekend, afternoon and holiday classes. Teachers had gone “beyond the call of duty” this year.
National Teachers Union spokesman Allen Thompson agreed a lot of work had been done by teachers and pupils.
He said the union was expecting a better pass rate in KZN this year.
Thompson said the union hoped that the credibility of exams would not be affected by irregularities and it had doubled the number of monitors it would send to exam centres.
“We hope that hard lessons were learnt as the current Grade 12 pupils would have seen last year’s pupils not getting their results for months. We hope this will discourage cheating.”
However, the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa’s Anthony Pierce said group copying appeared to be “par for the course” and even with rigorous checks, the system was not foolproof. “The exams have to be monitored very closely to ensure copying does not occur.”
Pierce said the union did not agree with the department’s prediction that there would be a 10 percentage point increase in KZN.
It believed if an increase occurred, it would be between one and five percentage points.
“While we acknowledge the interventions of the National Assembly, provincial legislature and Education Department earlier this year, it did not make fundamental changes to the results for the first and second quarter.”
The Mercury