By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The executive council of the quality education assurance body Umalusi has approved the release of the 2022 matric results on Thursday.
This comes after reports that Umalusi had asked for an extension from the Education Department to release the final marks.
Umalusi’s chairperson, Professor Yunus Ballim, made the announcement on Monday at a press briefing that the results of the NSC examinations administered by both the Independent Examinations Board and Department of Basic Education had been given the green light.
Ballim said that although irregularities had been identified, they were not systemic and therefore did not compromise the overall credibility and integrity of last year’s examinations. Umalusi’s approval of the NSC results means matric results can be released this week as expected.
“Having studied all the evidence presented, the executive committee of Umalusi council concluded the examination was administered largely in accordance with the regulations pertaining to the conduct, administration and management of the NSC examination,” he said.
Umalusi CEO Dr Mafu Rakometsi said the quality assurance body was also gravely concerned about reported cases of irregularities during the writing of the exams.
He said that based on the magnitude of the offences, different sanctions had been meted out against the candidates involved, such as nullification of the results and barring the candidates from writing the examination for either one or two examination cycles.
There was also the issue of candidates writing examinations at unaccredited private centres.
Dr Rakometsi added it was equally concerning that some unaccredited independent and private colleges admitted pupils while fully aware that they were operating unlawfully.
“In this regard, we urge the public to access a presentation titled ‘accreditation explained’ on the Umalusi website as this information is very useful because it assists you to verify if an independent or private college is accredited before you can register with it,” he said.
He further mentioned that quality assurance was also concerned about some of the questions that were problematic in some subjects during the examination cycle, adding some of these questions were excluded from the marking process because of their problematic nature.
Dr Rakometsi explained, these problematic questions resulted in marking concessions being applied for by the relevant assessment bodies for them to be excluded either entirely or partially from the question papers. Some of the requests for marking concessions were granted whereas others were rejected.
He said such errors could not be justified and were regrettable and Umalusi wished to apologise profusely for the errors in question papers.
“The South African public must find comfort in the fact that Umalusi has tried-and-tested methods to remedy the situation where such unfortunate errors (will be) detected,” he said.
He stated regarding all matters concerning how examinations were run, the quality assurance body was finalising detailed reports to highlight areas of non-compliance and directives for compliance and improvement for the future for all assessment bodies.
Meanwhile the general secretary of the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu), Mugwena Maluleke, is urging parents to support learners as they await the release of the results. He says this may help minimise the level of anxiety.
“Our appeal is that the people of our country rally behind our students and their parents as they will be making choices about their future and give them the support that they require. As the people of this particular country, let us continue to be supportive of our teachers, our students, and our schools in order to improve the quality of our examination outcomes, in particular the matric results.”
The general secretary of the Professional Educators Union, Ben Machipi, says he believes the release of the results a week after school has already begun could be the result of the aftermath of Covid-19. He believes that this is a disadvantage for students who want to register to repeat grade 12.
“I think there are signs that we will gradually revert back to our usual way of releasing the results in the first week of January. “However, the students who discover they would not have passed the matric exams will not have lost much ground in the two weeks that we will have covered.”