Following two matric exam paper leaks, the Department of Education announced that learners will have to rewrite Maths Paper 2 and Physical Sciences Paper 2.
The South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) said they would challenge this move and file an urgent court interdict to reverse the decision on Monday [December 7] as they believe the decision is unreasonable, according to ENCA.
Both Sadtu and the National Professional Teacher’s Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa) oppose the rewrite. Speaking to the Weekend Argus, Sadtu general secretary Mugwena Maluleke said that the decision was made despite them reaching a consensus to not have a rewrite.
“The Minister called a meeting today and the unions said there is no basis for a national rewrite, based on the initial investigation. Because the number of pupils (implicated) was a few and it did not warrant that all pupils must be punished,” he said. “then Umalusi met on their own and made their own decision which they took to the minister.”
He told the Weekend Argus that the decision has no legal basis and that the investigation shows that there was no major cheating.
This is the first time in South Africa’s history of the National Senior Certificate (NSC) exams that students nationwide will have to rewrite exam papers due to a leak.
An Investigations Task Team probed the extent of the leak, after which the decision was made to have learners rewrite the two papers.
“Some of the key findings are that the viral spread of information on the cyber networks made it virtually impossible to accurately identify the number of learners that have had access to the leaked question papers,” said Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga in a statement on Friday, December 4.
Maths Paper 2 is scheduled to be written on Tuesday December 15, 2020 at 2pm. Physical Sciences Paper 2 will be written on Thursday, December 17 2020 at 9am.
Picture: Twitter/ Department of Basic Education