Cape Town – SADTU and the National Department of Education will square off in the Gauteng High Court this morning where the union is seeking an urgent interdict to prevent the department from going ahead with the national rewrite of two leaked exam papers.
Sadtu filed court papers against all nine provincial education departments as well Umalusi, the quality assurance body, the minister of education and the Department of Education.
In its court papers the union, through its general secretary Mugwena Maluleke, said the department should continue its investigations and resort to all other available mechanisms of identifying the learners that had access to the question papers and follow its normal regulated procedures to deal with those learners who had prior access to the two question papers.
Maluleke said Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga based her decision on an interim report that identified 195 learners that had access to the leaked maths paper 2 and physical science paper 2.
He called Motshekga’s decision “panic-stricken” and an “unjust and psychological punishment to the entire group of matric learners who wrote the two subjects”.
Maluleke said the information that Motshekga used in order to infringe on the rights of thousands of learners, “some of whom were from indigent families and who did not even have the luxury of technology, constituted an unequivocal gross violation of the rights of such voiceless learners, it constituted a complete demoralisation of such learners which they would carry for their academic lives”.
Maluleke said Motshekga does not quote even a single piece of legislative provision that authorises her to subject innocent learners to rewrite what they have already written and await the results.
He said that was not a surprise because no such legislative authority existed. Therefore, her action was unlawful in that it was “ultra vires”.
Motshekga had apparently based her decision on an interim report on about 195 learners having seen the question papers.
Most learners who had gained access to the papers were members of a WhatsApp group of top achievers selected by the department itself for preferential treatment and support.
Department of Basic Education spokesperson Elijah Mhlanga said there was no judgment, and there was no basis for not going ahead with the rewrite.
“Filing papers means only the first step in the legal process,” Mhlanga said.
Equal Education and Equal Education Law Centre also said they were extremely worried about the stress and uncertainty that has been caused by the leaking of the matric mathematics and physical sciences papers, and by the decision that the two papers must be rewritten by all learners.
The two organisations said they were not convinced that getting all matrics to rewrite the leaked maths and physical sciences exam papers, was justified based on what officials from Umalusi and the DBE have said.
“The leaking of exam papers is very serious, but Umalusi and the DBE have not made a strong enough case for why insisting on a national rewrite is appropriate at this moment.”
Cape Argus