South Africa’s Council for Quality Assurance in General and Further Education and Training, known as Umalusi, approved the country’s 2018 national examination results last week.
Quality assurance of the management and administration of exit point examinations were assessed and the following were endorsed by Umalusi:Independent Examinations Board (IEB) – NSC AND GETC: ABET; South African Comprehensive Assessment Institute (SACAI) – NSC; Benchmark Assessment Agency (BAA) – GETC: ABET; Department of Basic Education (DBE) – NSC; Department of Higher Education And Training (DHET) –GETC: ABET; NATED N2-N3 Programmes; NC (V).
The National Senior Certificate was written by 796 542 students.
Umalusi said its quality assurance process focused on the external moderation of question papers for all subjects/learning areas/instructional offerings across all qualifications and assessment bodies.
It also focused on verification of a sample of site-based assessment (SBA) marks, monitoring of the assessment bodies’ state of readiness to conduct and manage the 2018 national examinations, monitoring the conduct of examinations, monitoring and verification of marking as well as standardisation of results.
There was “a marked improvement in the overall quality of question papers across the assessment bodies as more papers are approved after first or second submission to external moderators” reported the council.
The council also said that the 2018 national examinations went smoothly, “without any systemic irregularities”.
There were, however, several irregularities worth mentioning. These included, in Gauteng, the principal of Mpontsheng Secondary School allegedly gave answers to learners during the writing of Geography Paper 1. “Subsequently, candidates were afforded an opportunity to rewrite the examination immediately after the end of the scheduled examinations.”
In the Eastern Cape, an incident that affected the writing of English Home Language and English First Additional Language Paper 1 was reported at one school where candidates did not write the paper due to protests by candidates who were registered for Multiple Exam Opportunities (MEO). These candidates were also afforded an opportunity to rewrite, said Umalusi.
-ANA, Editing by Desiree Erasmus
