On Monday Umalusi CEO Dr Mafu Rakometsi and Umalusi council chairperson Professor Yunus Ballim announced that matric examinations results are expected to be released by DBE Minister Angie Motshekga on Thursday (January 18) with the general result release set for the next day, Friday January 19.
The wait for the November 2023 National Senior Certificate (NSC) examination results will soon be over when the results are released later this week.
This was announced by Umalusi council chairperson Professor Yunus Ballim at a media briefing on Monday after the quality assurance body approved the release of the results.
Professor Ballim said more than 890 000 full-time and part-time candidates sat for the matric exams administered by the Department of Basic Education (DBE) in November 2023.
“Having studied all the evidence presented, Exco of Council concluded that the examinations were administered largely in accordance with the regulations pertaining to the conduct, administration and management of the NSC examinations,” he said.
“Exco of Council therefore approves the release of the DBE November 2023 NSC examination results,” Professor Ballim said.
He added that irregularities which had been identified during the writing and marking stages of the examinations had not been systemic and therefore had not compromised the overall credibility and integrity of the NSC exams administered by the DBE.
“In respect of identified irregularities, the DBE is required to block the results of all candidates implicated in irregularities including the candidates who are implicated in the alleged acts of dishonesty pending the outcome of the DBE investigations and verification by Umalusi,” said Professor Ballim.
“Umalusi is concerned about the recurring instances of printing and packaging errors in question papers and the ongoing practice of group copying. The DBE is required to address the directors for compliance and improvement highlighted in the quality assurance of assessment report and to submit an improvement plan by March 15.”
The ministerial announcement on the exam results is expected to be made by DBE Minister Angie Motshekga on Thursday January 18 with the general result release set for the next day, Friday January 19.
Umalusi CEO, Dr Mafu Rakometsi, laid bare the issues that some pupils experienced during the examinations, among them challenges related to printing errors, poor print quality and translation quality.
These include:
“To mitigate the possible impact of the above errors on performance of candidates, the questions concerned were excluded from the marking process and the marks achieved upscaled using conversion tables,” said Dr Rakometsi.
“Umalusi urges all role players to put in stringent measures to prevent the recurrence of errors like these. This is because being fair to candidates means, among other things, being able to foresee and address any factor that may result in candidates performing poorly due to no fault of their own.”
Dr Rakometsi stressed that while group copying incidents are lower, Umalusi remains concerned about the group copying cases involving 945 NSC candidates that were detected by the DBE.
“These cases are not yet resolved because the numbers are still being verified. Of the total, 763 cases were detected in KwaZulu-Natal and 164 cases were detected in Mpumalanga. Umalusi is extremely encouraged by the fact that there were no detected cases of paper leakages. No papers were leaked in these examinations and the examinations have therefore not been compromised in terms of their credibility and integrity,” said Dr Rakometsi.