Cape Town - Candidates who are considering cheating during their matric exams should think twice as stricter measures to prevent exam irregularities will be implemented this year.
Last week the Council of Education Ministers approved a number of recommendations, which will aim to prevent a recurrence of last year’s group copying scandal in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape.
Jessica Shelver, the spokeswoman for Western Cape Education MEC Debbie Schäfer, said the Department of Basic Education had provided provinces with an implementation plan for the prevention of exam irregularities.
“The document contains a number of steps to strengthen the examination processes and systems in order to prevent irregularities. It will be implemented in the province.”
Among other things, criteria have been developed for provinces to audit and categorise all exam centres as high, medium or low risk writing venues.
High risk centres will include those where there had been repeated occurrences of irregularities, group copying and poor management, and officials will be appointed to invigilate exams at these schools.
“Another measure which will be used to identify high risk centres will be through curriculum implementation monitoring. One of the things uncovered during the investigations (which are still in the process of being finalised), is that one of the reasons for the group copying was that the curriculum had not been adequately covered during the course of the academic year,” Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said at a press conference last week.
Medium risk centres will include those where there had been irregularities committed by individual candidates, and whistle blowing by individuals regarding possible irregularities while the remaining centre will be classified as low risk.
A national invigilator training manual has been compiled by the Department of Basic Education, and provincial managers from all provinces will receive training in September to ensure that they are uniformly trained.
Motshekga has also indicated that provincial hotlines would be set up for teachers and pupils to report exam irregularities.
In a statement released before last year’s final matric exams, Schäfer said the results of candidates found with crib notes or carrying any electronic devices could be declared null and void.
In such cases, the result for the specific subject would be marked as irregular, but the candidate would receive results for the other subjects as well as a letter informing the candidate about the irregularity that occurred and the sanction imposed.
The candidate would not receive a National Senior Certificate until he or she had rewritten the subject and applied for a combination of results.
Disqualified candidates could be banned from writing the exam for between one and three years.
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Cape Argus