The release of exam results of over 20 000 students at around 50 technical and vocational education training (TVET) colleges around the country has been frozen while the Department of Higher Education and Training investigates the leaking of exam papers before they were written.

According to the Sunday Times, exam questions and answers for 25 subjects including maths, engineering, artisan studies and more under the natural sciences category, were leaked to an unknown number of students days before they were written.

Now, the department has postponed the release of results which were scheduled for the end of August, while it conducts an internal investigation into the matter, and said results are likely to be released on 16th October.

“It was identical to the paper I wrote. I deleted the one I received on WhatsApp before I could sit for the exam,” an Ekurhuleni West College student told the weekly newspaper. “I feel really bad because some students had studied hard and didn’t want to receive those papers on WhatsApp.”

The Democratic Alliance (DA) blamed the saga on the department, saying it is as a result of it transferring the control of TVET colleges from provincial to national government.

“The 50 TVET (formerly FET) colleges at which hundreds of thousands of students study for artisanal and other skills training have, in the past few years, moved away from provincial control to the direct control of the Department of Higher Education and Training,” the party’s shadow minister of higher education and training,  Belinda Bozzolisaid in a blog post.

“The department has little experience in managing exams and now has to manage thousands of separate exams, written three times a year, in dozens of different exam venues all over the country,” Bozzoli added. “The college exam system is vast and more complex than the matric system, yet its management is not adequately resourced. The colleges and exam venues are themselves of variable quality, while insufficient and inexperienced staff means smooth management of the process is well-nigh impossible.”

Bozzoli said the DA has written to Yvonne Phosa, chairperson of the portfolio committee on higher education and training, requesting the department be called to an emergency meeting of the committee to present a solution and prevention plan.

[Source – Sunday Times]