Umalusi has approved the 2019 national senior certificate (NSC) exam results, saying there were no leaked exam papers this year. Lucky Ditaunyane, the spokesperson for the Council for Quality Assurance in General and Further Education and Training (Umalusi) said they are happy that no major incidents were reported.

“In other years there were cases of leaked exam papers, however, we are proud to announce that we had no leaks and no major hiccups this year. We are encouraged by how things panned out this year and we want to take this opportunity to thank everyone,” he said.

Ditaunyane announced that thousands of markers are expected to start the marking process today.

“The marking process takes place in all provinces annually and is normally a very huge operation. The process is normally conducted over a two-week period and should be completed by15th December 2019 so that other procedures can be done,” Ditaunyane said.

Following great concern by students as well as parents over the difficulty of the Mathematics Paper one and how learners’ marks could impact their overall performance, Ditaunyane said measures have been put in place to assess the matter.

“The aforementioned paper will be prioritised and fortunately Umalusi has put some quality assurance procedures into place. This is a process that happens annually immediately after exams have been completed. This process is called post-exam analysis where experts in various subjects come together and check the papers that were written and thoroughly examine the papers to analyse the fairness of the paper. They then report to the committee of Umalusi councils called the Assessments Standards Committee who take all qualitative input into consideration during the process of standardising the results.”

Ditaunyane confirmed that all marks will be allocated fairly, and parents should rest assured that marks will be checked by the council before results are released.

“To ensure that marks are conducted properly, officials will be sent to various marketing centres to monitor the marking process and verify the marking. The officials will then pick random samples of mark scripts and do checks to see if it is done according to the guidelines provided and that is how they ensure marking is done fairly,” he said.

The wait will soon be no more as thousands of matriculants will know their fate on the evening on January 7th, 2020 when the Minister of Basic Education announces the results, however students will only have access to results a day later.

“Annually the results are released by the minister and students then have the option of either checking for their results online or at the school where they were registered to write the exams, however in the Western Cape it is slightly different as students only have access to results two days after the minister released the results,” he stated. VOC