Exam leaks an accident waiting to happen
13 September 2015
The recent leaks of exam papers for thousands of artisan students at Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges around South Africa can be put down mainly to the ill-conceived move of TVET colleges from Provincial control to the direct control of the ill-equipped national Department of Higher Education and Training.
The fact that the results of these exams, due to be released at the end of last month, are now on hold has impacted at least 20 000 students and must be addressed urgently.
These young people have sought to better their opportunities with education which the DA believes is a vital foundation to building a prosperous life. Government's role should be to empower young people with opportunities to lead successful lives, yet the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) is ill equipped to do this.
The DA will today write to the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Higher Education and Training, Yvonne Phosa, to request that the Department be called to an emergency meeting of the Committee to present a plan to fix this problem and to ensure it does not happen again.
The DA will also request that Treasury be called to the Committee to explain why it is that the Department of Higher Education and Training is repeatedly expected to fulfil an expanded mandate without proper funding and to ensure that in the upcoming MTEF discussions this is addressed.
Several exam papers, which fall under natural science studies, were leaked to candidates through WhatsApp just days before they were written. The results of thousands of students in 25 subjects have now been blocked.
The 50 TVET (formerly FET) colleges at which hundreds of thousands of students study for artisanal and other skills training have, in the past few years, moved away from Provincial control to the direct control of the Department of Higher Education and Training.
But the move has had serious shortcomings:
1. The Department has not been adequately resourced to manage this huge new undertaking. Higher Education has been consistently starved of funds and the Department itself operates on a shoestring budget. Treasury has been entirely unsympathetic to repeated calls for additional substantive funding which means that the absorption of the Colleges remains an essentially unfunded mandate.
2. The Department has little experience in managing exams and now has to manage thousands of separate exams, written three times a year, in dozens of different exam venues all over the country. The College exam system is vast and more complex than the Matric system, yet its management is not adequately resourced. The Colleges and exam venues are themselves of variable quality, while insufficient and inexperienced staff means smooth management of the process is well-nigh impossible.
3. The Department has struggled to streamline the multiple IT systems used by the different exam centres as well as the variable skills levels in the various colleges.
In this context, it is not at all surprising that an exam paper leak occurred. In fact this was an accident waiting to happen. The College exam "pipeline", from the time exams are written to the end product, is deeply flawed.
Millions of our young people are trying to improve their lives and to find employment through education. They should not be compromised because their exams are poorly administered. The DA will continue to pursue every avenue to ensure that their future opportunities are protected.
Statement issued by Prof Belinda Bozzoli MP, DA Shadow Minister of Higher Education, September 13 2015
