The CEO of the School Governing Bodies, Paul Colditz, says the Department of Basic Education is in a tight spot because Umalusi has warned that failure to rewrite the two leaked papers will compromise the integrity of this year’s matric exams.
The High Court in Pretoria will on Friday afternoon deliver judgment in an application challenging the department’s decision that Physical Science Paper 2 and Mathematics Paper 2 should be rewritten.
Colditz says after meeting with the department’s officials, they have concluded that there is no other option but to rewrite the two papers.
“It appears that the only possibility that would save the credibility of exams would be a rewrite. If Umalusi says to you we’re not prepared to certify these two papers unless you rewrite them, you have to comply with Umalusi – an independent body that has to certify the fairness and the accuracy and the integrity of the exams,” explains Colditz.
The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu), lobby group AfriForum and independent learners have brought the urgent court application.
Minister Angie Motshekga says the two papers must be rewritten this month.
Negative psychological impact over the rewriting of the leaked exam papers
Clinical Psychologist Hameeda Bassa-Suleman says that this have a negative psychological impact on learners.
“It’s going to put them under generalised anxiety, stress, and pressure. To take students who think they had been writing the original exam and to be told that was not the original exam and they are going to have to write again, is going to put them under a different frame of mind, which is not going to put them at their best.”
“There will be very few students with a lot of resilience, who will be able to do better on the second exam. But a lot of students will suffer because of this unprecedented kind of opportunity whereby they will have to rewrite an exam they thought they had finished,” explains Bassa-Suleman.
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