Tag: cheating

Extent of black matric cheating exposed

Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga has revealed the extent to which teachers helped matric pupils cheat in last year’s exams.

Motshekga yesterday disclosed some of the evidence given during hearings into group cheating at some KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape matric exam centres, where only black schools are implicated.

She said teachers and principals who encouraged group copying, would be criminally charged.

The continuing investigation will now focus on teachers, principals and invigilators.

A KwaZulu-Natal pupil wrote on an exam answer sheet: “We can now continue.”

This, according to Motshekga, “clearly indicated . that someone was dictating answers to them”.

She said that in other instances teachers had simply walked into exam rooms and told invigilators to leave so that they could help their pupils.

“The papers are opened at the school, so teachers would not have had sight of the paper before. So, I think, as the teacher looked at the paper, she found there was a section she had not taught the class and quickly rushed to the exam room to dictate it to them.”

A KwaZulu-Natal pupil admitted during the hearings to cribbing.

Motshekga said the exam results of pupils found guilty of group copying would be nullified.

The department launched the investigation into cheating allegations involving 153 exam centres in Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng earlier this year.

More than 3000 pupils implicated in group copying will sit for this year’ s exams in October and November.

Only one KwaZulu-Natal pupil, among a group of 2307, was cleared of cheating charges; 56 confessed.

Of the 720 implicated in Eastern Cape, 26 were cleared and 17 confessed.

Former acting director-general of the Department of Basic Education Paddy Padayachee said security would be improved.

Source: timeslive

Ottowa, Canada’s capital of cheating liers

Canada’s capital city, Ottawa, is also it’s most potentially adulterous, Reuters reports. Around 1 in 5 of the population is registered on Ashley Madison, a social network aimed at married people that touts “Life is short. Have an affair” as its slogan.

The sleepy city, with a population of around 883,000 boasts 189,810 users, according to Avid Life Media, the Toronto-based company that owns the service.

ALM faced a huge hack this week from a group called the Impact Team, exposing 37 million users’ data in a demand to take down Ashley Madison and sister site EstablishedMen.com. The hackers referred to the site’s clients as “cheating dirtbags who deserve no discretion.”

The site says that it has suspended fees for users who want to delete their accounts.

Meanwhile, it seems like Ottawa’s politicians and civil servants are the ones having the most difficulty staying faithful — the most-registered postal code in the city represented Parliament Hill, the seat of power in the country, Reuters reports.

ALM CEO Noel Biderman thinks “power, fame and opportunity” are the likely causes of infidelity in the city. In a newspaper report published earlier this year, Biderman admitted that capital cities usually top subscription rates for the adulterous service.

Ottawa residents seem to think the reason is much simpler — everyone is just bored out of their minds.

“Why do you think everyone goes to Montreal to have a good time?” Kary, who refused to give her last name, told Reuters. “Ottawa is the city fun forgot.”

Source: Reuters

Black teachers help students to cheat

A “significant number” of matriculants have admitted that invigilators and teachers helped them cheat in last year’s final exams, the Department of Basic Education said yesterday.

In January, multiple pupils gave suspiciously similar answers (complete with identical spelling errors) at 58 examination centres in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.

It was claimed that invigilators, including teachers and headmasters, had read out answers at the front of the exam venues for pupils to write down.

Spokesman Elijah Mhlanga said yesterday that the department had completed its investigation at half of the regions in the Eastern Cape.

“We have received confessions from a significant number of learners, who have indicated that they were assisted by adults invigilating or by their teachers and principals.”

The disciplinary hearings are expected to be finalised next week.

Source: timeslive.co.za

S. African school maths goes down even further

Matriculants who wrote maths, maths literacy and physical science did much worse than their peers in 2013, said monitoring body Umalusi on Wednesday.

Speaking from Pretoria today, Umalusi council chairperson John Volmink said the drop in mathematics results was due to major changes in the content of the subject. This year, pupils had to study Euclidean geometry and probability.

“This was shown in the learner performance in that there is a significant increase in the failure rate compared with 2013,” he told reporters. “However learners at the top experienced the mathematics examinations much easier.”

He said there were more failures than distinctions in maths, but he believes this was due to how the pupils were being taught. He said there had been no real improvement in marks over the past five years.

“To be quite frank, we thought the results would be much worse because large sections of the mathematics curriculum was not there last year,” he added.

Volmink said maths literacy marks were adjusted upwards at all levels as pupils did “significantly worse” this year than in any previous year.

In physical science, learners’ marks were also adjusted upwards at all levels.

The results of all but 58 examination centres implicated in cheating will be released next week.