The South African Democratic Teacher’s Union (Sadtu) says quality assurance body, Umalusi, must abide by the ruling of the High Court in Pretoria and declare the national certificate examinations credible.
Earlier on Friday, the court set aside the Basic Education Department’s decision for matrics to rewrite two leaked exam papers.
Sadtu along with lobby group Afriforum and a group of independent matric learners brought an urgent application to stop the rewrite.
The two papers in question are Physical Science Paper Two and Mathematics Paper Two.
Sadtu’s Nomusa Cembi says: “The court has ruled and Umalusi should abide by what the court has ruled because we feel that the exams is still credible in that it is a minority of learners and it those learners found to have access to the paper who should rewrite and not all the innocent learners who did not have access to the paper. Evidence shows that it is a minute number of learners who accessed the paper.”
The Basic Education Minister, Angie Motshekga, will have to pay the court costs after she lost a bid to force matriculants to rewrite the two leaked exam papers.
Motshekga and the National Examinations Irregularities Committee (NEIC) are also ordered to mark unaffected exam papers as normal. The leak only affected 200 learners.
AfriForum brought the application on behalf of four matrics.
AfriForum’s lawyer, Willie Spies, wished matriculants a happy December holiday.
“We are absolutely delighted about this judgment. This judgment shows that good hardworking people can still win the fight for justice. We are looking forward to the rest of this process, and we wishing every matric a wonderful holiday.”
Motshekga had announced last Friday that learners would rewrite the two papers on December 15 and 17, respectively.
Motshekga says the papers must be rewritten to protect the integrity of the matric examinations:
The National Professional Teacher’s Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa) believes the exam rewrites should have been targeted at the schools where evidence was found of pupils having accessed the leaked exam papers, while the National Teachers’ Union (Natu) Allen Thompson has welcomed the decision for matrics to rewrite the assessments.
