More than 900 Grade 12 learners who were scheduled to write Geography Paper 2 under a private assessment body, the South African Comprehensive Assessment Institute (SACAI), had to be quarantined after errors were identified in the exam paper.
The issue was discovered during the reading session before the official start of the exam last Wednesday. SACAI issued a corrected version of the question paper, which was completed by the 967 affected learners.
Education activist Hendrick Makaneta expressed concerns about the implications for the integrity of exams set by private assessment bodies.
Makaneta said, “Umalusi along with the Department [of Education] should be able to ensure that such mistakes are dealt with well in advance so that learners are not disadvantaged. And so with this kind of mistake, we foresee a situation whereby the entire examination may not be regarded as fair given the issues that we are confronted with from SACAI.”
Authorities have yet to comment on how they will address concerns regarding fairness and the impact of the error on the learners’ examination experience.
PODCAST | Alarm raised over error in Geography paper two:
