Report on the National Senior Certificate Examination Results 2010.

REPORT ON THE NATIONAL SENIOR CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION RESULTS • 2010
2.11 Dealing with irregularities
The credibility of the examination depends on the types of irregularities detected and how these irregularities are
dealt with. The manner in which the 2010 National Senior Certificate (NSC) examination has been conducted,
has once again confirmed that the national examination system in South Africa has matured to a level at which
it is able to deliver a credible examination.
The Department of Basic Education has well-established procedures and structures for enhancing the integrity
of public examinations. The following structures have been established at the different levels of governance to
promote the integrity of public examinations, co-ordinate and manage the handling of examination irregularities,
viz., the Ministerial Committee referred to as the National Examination Irregularities Committee (NEIC);
Provincial Examination Irregularities Committees (PEIC); District Assessment Irregularities Committees (DAIC)
and School Assessment Irregularities Committees (SAIC). The National Examination Irregularities Committee
(NEIC) is established to ensure that examination irregularities across all examining bodies are managed in a
coordinated manner, such that the integrity and credibility of public examinations are not compromised.
The NEIC met on 21 December 2010 to discuss the preliminary report on examination irregularities submitted
by the Provincial Examinations Irregularities Committees (PEIC).
In the main, the NEIC has noted a significant improvement in the handling of irregularities as well as a remarkable
reduction in the number of cases of irregularities reported . this was evident in all nine provinces and the
gains that have been made must be maintained in subsequent years . However, there were challenges which
included, inter alia, power outages during the writing of the Computer Application Technology (CAT) question
paper; late delivery of question papers in some PEds and shortages of question papers . nevertheless, these
challenges were well managed, such that none of the candidates were adversely affected or disadvantaged .
The reduction in the frequency of irregularities is due to an improvement in the examination systems and
processes, which has emanated from the coordinating and supportive role rendered by the Inter-Provincial
Examinations Committee (IPEC). Irregularities in previous years were also due to the poor quality of invigilation.
Therefore, in 2010 the training of invigilators was prioritized and the DBE developed and distributed to all
PEds, the National Guideline on Invigilation for the NSC External Examinations .
the dbE also deployed additional monitors to different centres in the provinces . top monitors of the integrated
Quality Management System (IQMS) were selected and specifically trained by the DBE to monitor the writing
of the examination across all PEDs. As a result, an increased number of schools were monitored in 2010.
The IQMS external moderators were able to monitor a total of 1525 schools during the examination. The
increased presence of monitors in all provinces led to schools reporting all cases of serious irregularities as
well as reducing the number of irregularities in general. For example, there has been a drastic reduction in the
number of technical errors and complete eradication of irregularities arising from behavioral errors and acts
of dishonesty in the mpumalanga Province . the number of irregularities decreased from 315 administrative
and 61 serious regularities in 2009 to 165 technical errors and no serious irregularities in the 2010 NSC
examination in Mpumalanga.
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