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Mathanzima Mweli, the director-general of the basic education department, has been left “disappointed” after a maths paper was leaked to matric pupils in Limpopo.
Last week, Mweli wrote an opinion piece for City Press in which he set out the steps in which the department had taken to safeguard the matric exams.
Although he voiced his concerns about Limpopo storage centres, he believed that enough had been done to address the security arrangements and was confident that all would go well.
Today, the department confirmed that the national senior certificate mathematics paper 2 exam had been leaked to Grade 12 pupils in Giyani.
Department spokesperson Elijah Mhlanga said that a few schools within the Mopani district had access to the leaked maths papers before they were written on Monday.
“We are going to quarantine all scripts of the schools in the area to establish if there are any patterns,” Mhlanga said.
He added that the Hawks and an investigating team from the department of education would act swiftly to investigate the matter.
He cautioned pupils not to take part in criminal acts and to report any incidents of leaked papers and those behind the acts.
“The department would like to assure learners, parents and other stakeholders that it has taken extra ordinary measures to safeguard the integrity of these exams and would work tirelessly to expose and charge those behind the incident of the maths exam paper in Limpopo,” Mhlanga said.
To avoid the leaking of exam papers, storage points across the country were audited to ensure that they complied with minimum security standards. Those that did not comply were not allowed to store exam papers.
Provincial education departments were instructed to audit all exam centres and to classify them as high, medium and low risk centres. There was extra invigilation at centres considered medium or high risk to mitigate the risk of leaking of papers or any other security breach.
To safeguard papers and prevent the risk of storing printed papers for longer periods, provincial education departments had also adopted a principle of “just in time” printing.
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