Umalusi has advised learners and parents to direct their queries regarding the assessment outcomes of the 2024 National Senior Certificate (NSC) exam to the South African Comprehensive Assessment Institute (SACAI).
These queries include concerns relating to the costs of and timeliness for viewing, re-marking or re-checking of examination scripts, re-writing of examinations and other NSC exam-related processes.
Umalusi is the Council for Quality Assurance in General and Further Education and Training in South Africa. It is responsible for ensuring that educational institutions, qualifications, and assessment processes within its scope meet acceptable quality standards.
SACAI is a private assessment body that operates under its own policies, which have built-in mechanisms for complaints to be lodged whenever a learner or parent is dissatisfied with assessment outcomes or procedural aspects of the outcomes.
Following the approval for the release of results, Umalusi has been receiving a number of queries from learners and parents regarding the assessment outcomes of the 2024 SACAI NSC examinations.
The queries are mainly about the discrepancies between the final marks and the marks achieved by the learners during the year.
“The approval decision was arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence presented at the time. Such evidence was gathered by various role players at different stages of Umalusi’s quality assurance cycle,” Umalusi said on Monday.
Umalusi has reiterated that the 2024 NSC exam, administered by the SACAI, was subjected to the following quality assurance processes:
• External moderation of question papers and site-based assessments or school based assessment (SBA) to ensure the maintenance of standards of assessment.
• Audit of the system to conduct, administer and manage the examinations to determine the readiness of the whole system.
• Monitoring of the writing of the examinations across sampled examination centres to determine the credibility of the examinations.
• Participation in marking guidelines standardisation meetings in selected subjects to ensure that the marking process is accurate and reliable.
• Verification of quality of marking in sampled subjects to ensure accuracy and reliability.
• Standardisation of examination marks to ensure comparability and consistency in learner performance across years.
“The abovementioned quality assurance processes were applied consistently across all the 24 subjects linked to the NSC examination administered and managed by the SACAI,” Umalusi said.
The principles are available on the website of Umalusi, as is the case with the other Umalusi quality assurance processes that are used in conjunction with standardisation principles.
For detailed information about the process of standardisation of SBA and external examination marks, the public can refer to the Umalusi presentation:
https://www.umalusi.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Standardisation-ofResults_Explained.pdf.
“Since the NSC is assessed by three assessment bodies, namely the SACAI, IEB and Department of Basic Education (DBE), learners and parents are advised to make an informed decision in terms of which assessment body to register with for the NSC examinations.
“Concerning accreditation status of the SACAI, this body was granted full accreditation status by Umalusi with effect from 1 October 2022 to assess the General Education and Training Certificate: Adult Basic Education and Training (GETC: ABET) and NSC examinations.
“The rationale behind accreditation of private education and training institutions and private assessment bodies is to ensure that they have the capacity to deliver and assess qualifications registered on the GFETQSF and are doing so to the expected standards and quality,” Umalusi said. - SAnews.gov.za
