The code of professional ethics of the SA Council for Educators (Sace) states that an educator must behave “in a way that enhances the dignity and status of the teaching profession and that does not bring the profession into disrepute”. Among other things, it mentions that teachers must refrain from engaging in illegal activities. That is why allegations of a brazen matric exam cheating scandal in the Manyeleti circuit in Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga, where some pupils allegedly paid teachers to join WhatsApp groups on which answers were posted while exams were in session, should be taken extremely seriously.
The revelations in the Sunday Times included disappointing claims that some teachers and invigilators helped grade 12 pupils cheat by providing answers to them during toilet breaks. A life sciences teacher from Dlumana High was suspended on November 22 after he posted answers on a group used by teachers for the life sciences paper 2 while it was being written — apparently by mistake, having intended to send the answers to cheating pupils. He deleted it soon afterwards. Seven teachers from Dlumana High, including the suspended teacher, as well as 12 from Tlhavekisa Secondary and 13 from Mdluli High, who were appointed to mark matric papers, have had their appointments revoked.
While the actions of those teachers in the Manyeleti circuit, who have been implicated in helping matric candidates cheat, is scandalous and must be roundly condemned, it would be a grave injustice to tarnish the noble profession by labelling the more than 447,000 teachers in SA corrupt.
The planning, preparation and management of the National Senior Certificate exams is a mammoth task. This year more than 921,000 candidates entered for the exams that were conducted at 6,307 public schools. The department pulled out all the stops during the planning and preparation for and administration of the exams.
Audits of all sites where question papers are printed, packed and stored were conducted. Intensive monitoring was conducted by officials from the department of basic education during the extra classes offered over the holidays. For example, basic education director-general, Mathanzima Mweli, made 108 visits to centres across the country to monitor the winter schools’ programme.
For the exams themselves, resident monitors were deployed to all high-risk centres, and officials from the head offices of the different provincial education departments took over the management of exam centres where irregularities were reported. A valuable tool was the implementation of an exam hotline that was available day and night. The department of basic education must be commended for swinging into action and launching a preliminary inquiry into irregularities at some schools in the Manyeleti circuit after receiving a tip-off on its exam hotline. It must also be commended for instituting a full-blown probe into the suspected irregularities discovered at some of the schools in the circuit.
Basic education department spokesperson Elijah Mhlanga is adamant “we need to do all we can to protect the credibility, integrity, image and profile of the National Senior Certificate exams”.
According to the regulations on the administration and management of the National Senior Certificate exams, invigilators, teachers and principals providing assistance to candidates must be suspended immediately from all exam-related work, and the matter must also be reported to the police.
It is to be welcomed that matric markers will also subject exam scripts from the suspected schools to investigative marking to establish whether candidates were assisted. The results for an exam in which a candidate is found guilty of being assisted by invigilators, teachers and principals may be declared null and void. In addition, the candidate may be barred from a minimum of one and a maximum of three subsequent exams, excluding the supplementary exams.
These sanctions are welcome, but the department also needs to come down hard on the real culprits — the teachers whom pupils allegedly paid to supply them with answers to exam questions. In addition to them facing an internal disciplinary inquiry and hopefully being banned from teaching for life, they should be named and shamed and criminally charged. They need to be taught a very hard lesson.
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