Department of Basic Education launches investigation after detecting irregularities

11 Aug 2014

The Department of Basic Education (DBE) has launched a full investigation into the examinations conducted for adult candidates in the KwaZulu-Natal province. This was prompted by examination irregularities that were detected jointly by the DBE and KwaZulu-Natal Education department and confirmed by the Quality Assurance Council, Umalusi.

The Senior Certificate examination, commonly referred to as the "Old Matric", was offered to adult candidates since 2008, when the National Senior Certificate (NSC), based on the National Curriculum Statement was introduced. This was an examination specifically designed to accommodate adult learners who, left school without completing their matric. This implies they either had partial credits to the Matric or no credits at all. The intention of the department was to terminate this examination in 2011, but due to learner demand this examination has been extended until 2014.

At the commencement of the examination on 5 May 2014, reports were received from the province highlighting incidents of examination irregularities. These referred, in the main, to support being provided to candidates during the writing of the examination. In response to these reports, the Provincial Education Department (PED) together with the DBE deployed additional officials to reinforce the monitoring at these centres.

 In a number of cases provincial officials took over the management of the examinations at centres where there were indications of any malpractice, and in other cases resident monitors were deployed to these examination centres. In response to these initiatives there was a substantial decrease in the reports of irregularities from the province.

However, it would appear that the actions of the DBE and the PED were not adequate to eradicate this practice completely. Umalusi during its centralised moderation of a sample of the 2014 SC examination scripts from the KZN province identified similar responses in the answer scripts, which warranted further investigations.

The DBE immediately instituted a full investigation, on 21 July 2014, headed by the Chief Director for Examinations, together with a team of 32 examiners to conduct an audit of the scripts from centres where there was some suspicion of an irregularity. The purpose of this audit was to establish the nature and extent of the examination irregularities, the centres, subjects and candidates that were implicated in the irregularity, in the KZN province. The investigation also included an interview with the chief markers that were responsible for the marking of the examination scripts.

The investigative audit of the answer scripts was conducted in 95 centres that were purposively sampled from the 365 centres registered for the SC examination in KZN.

Based on the evidence obtained the DBE concluded that there has been orchestrated support provided to candidates at certain centres in the province during the writing of the 2014 Senior Certificate examination. This emanates from collusion between the chief invigilators/invigilators and candidates at certain centres. This practice is fairly widespread across the province given that the irregularities were identified in centres across nine of the twelve districts, but not across every examination centre. Of the 95 examination centres that were subjected to the investigative audit 49 were found to have engaged in one type of irregularity or the other and 46 were cleared.

A full report was presented to Umalusi, the Quality Assurance Council that is responsible for the final approval of the results. Umalusi, in conjunction with the DBE has decided to hold back the results of the KwaZulu-Natal province, so as to conduct a more thorough investigation of every examination in the province so that candidates and centres that were not implicated in this irregular practice can be cleared and have their results released, while those that are implicated will be dealt with in terms of the Regulations governing the Senior Certificate examinations.

The DBE can confidently say that this practice is confined to one province and Umalusi has cleared the other eight provinces and their results will be released on 13 August 2014. The Senior Certificate examination is in great demand as can be observed by the high enrolments in this examination over the last three years.

The early identification of these irregularities and the isolation of these irregularities to one province, confirms that the examination detection and security systems are effective and therefore the examination is not compromised as a whole.

The commitment of the department is to the candidates who are innocent and have not been engaged in any of these malpractices. These candidates will be cleared over the next few weeks and their results will be made available in the shortest time possible. The DBE apologises to these candidates for the inconvenience caused and under these circumstances it is of paramount importance that examination credibility is not compromised.

Statement issued by Elijah Mhlanga and Troy Martens, Department of Basic Education, August 11 2014

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