Gauteng Education MEC, Panyaza Lesufi, says the Department of Education has put strict measures in place to ensure cheating in the exams is curbed.
Lesufi says learners caught cheating, risk being banned and having a criminal record.
Lesufi was speaking to the SABC on the province’s readiness for the Matric final exams which start next week Wednesday.
He added that the emergence of technology has made the task of detecting cheating more difficult for invigilators.
“We’re fighting with lots and lots of new things, new devices lately. We have a watch, it’s no longer a watch like we used to know it just for checking the clock, but people can record, take pictures, they can google. But we trained our chief invigilators. We’re also putting in Gauteng for the first time signal jammers, as well as inside our examination centres. Not all our centres but high risk centres we put signal jammers so that any signal that come there cannot be utilised,” says Lesufi.
Matric preparations
Matric learners from Eldorado Park Secondary School in the south of Johannesburg will start preparing for their final exams at a camp after missing school for the past three months.
The Gauteng Department of Education has intervened after the school governing body had a dispute with teachers union, SADTU, that saw about 20 of the teaching staff down tools.
The camp is expected to be a week-long programme starting from Monday. More than 600 000 full-time matrics will start writing their exams nationwide later this month.
Lesufi has expressed concern over the results of the matriculants at the school.
“There were seven teachers that left the school feeling that they are not safe and they then reported the matter to the Department. The Department then established an independent investigation, the investigation gave us a report and upon implementation of that report, we then persuaded those seven teachers to go back. Unfortunately the community said they don’t want those teachers back. Because the community said they don’t want those teachers back, 14 other teachers also went AWOL in solidarity. After these squabbles, these fights, i’m not confident with their results.”
