Pupils ‘wrote exams for absent adults’
Teachers suspended after telling senior learners to write paper for grownups who failed to pitch
● Six teachers at a school in northern KwaZulu-Natal have been implicated in a cheating scandal.
Some of the teachers allegedly instructed pupils to write an adult education paper on behalf of candidates who did not arrive for the exam.
Provincial education department spokesperson Muzi Mahlambi said six teachers from Nyamane High School, north of Jozini, had been suspended. He said it concerned a level 4 exam in an adult basic education and training English paper on November 5.
The Sunday Times has also learnt that a teacher, who was the chief invigilator, asked a security guard at the school to act as invigilator for the paper.
An official from the Umkhanyakude district who was responsible for the exams visited the school on the day and found 29 candidates without identity documents, including four who were wearing the Nyamane High School uniform.
According to a teacher with knowledge of the events, as well as a whistleblower, 21 of the 29 candidates sitting for the paper were pupils of Nyamane High, 17 of them from grade 12 and four from grade 11.
Most of the 21 pupils admitted they had been instructed by one teacher in particular to write the paper on behalf of the adult candidates. The teacher is said to have admitted asking the pupils to write the paper on behalf of the adult candidates because the adults had not arrived for the exams.
The Sunday Times has also reliably learnt that the chief invigilator confessed to having asked pupils to write the paper for adults.
In another incident also involving an adult education paper in KwaZulu-Natal, four teachers from Ogazini Primary in Mkuze and an adult education lecturer from the Zamokwakhe adult education and training centre in the Mkuze circuit were found with the travel and tourism exam paper while adult students were writing the exam.
The whistleblower told the Sunday Times that a district monitor who arrived at the exam venue noticed that the invigilator, who was an adult education lecturer, had a question paper in his hand.
“The monitor found a photocopy of a loose page of the question paper with handwritten answers inside the question paper. The invigilator told the monitor he was bored and was reading the paper,” the whistleblower said.
The source said the monitor went to the staff room and found four teachers answering the travel and tourism question paper.
Disciplinary hearings
“One of the teachers took the photocopied question paper and threw it down. The monitor found that it was the same paper that was written that day.”
The chief invigilator is said to have admitted taking the question paper out of the exam room, making a copy of it and giving it to the four teachers in the staff room.
According to regulations governing exams, a question paper should not leave the exam room until pupils have completed it.
Mahlambi said the six teachers from Nyamane High faced disciplinary hearings and that pupils would be called as witnesses. The teachers face dismissal if they are found guilty.
An Eastern Cape education department spokesperson, Mali Mtima, said the department had charged a teacher with misconduct after he took a matric question paper into the school staff room while pupils were writing the paper.
“We are anticipating the teacher will be suspended when schools reopen in January.”
He said the department had “a few cases” of candidates having been found with crib notes.
An education source said two matric pupils in Limpopo had been caught with crib notes during an exam.
The pupils had admitted the transgression and faced having their marks in the subject being nullified. They could also be barred from writing the paper again for up to three years.
Limpopo education department spokesperson Sam Makondo declined to comment on this incident, but said the rule when crib notes were found was that they were taken from the pupil, along with the answer sheet. A new, blank answer sheet was given to the pupil to continue the exam.
North West education department spokesperson Elias Malindi said no information about exam irregularities could be divulged at this stage.
Western Cape education spokesperson Bronagh Hammond said her department would release a report on any irregularities next month.
In the Free State, no “major irregularities” were reported.
Referring to this year’s matric exams on a national level, Elijah Mhlanga, a spokesperson for the national department of basic education, said no major irregularities such as group copying were detected during marking, but several pupils had been found with crib notes and cellphones in the exam rooms.