Education director talks about 2014 cheating scandal

THE Department of Education (DoE) in the uThungulu District remains optimistic about the future of its pupils despite the matric class of 2014 cheating scandal.

This was the word from the DoE District Director David Chonco, who spoke to the Zululand Observer in an exclusive interview since the cheating scandal was exposed by Umalusi (Council for Quality Assurance on General and Further Education).

Chonco also spoke about the decline in matric results, and how they plan to bounce back.

ZO: The cheating scandal. Did you see this coming?

Chonco: All I can say is that the scandal did tarnish our image as a district. However, we still regard this as allegations levelled against some of our schools. As you know, initially 16 of our schools were alleged to have cheated, only to have 10 of those cleared. The other six schools have been visited and interviewed by Umalusi and we are awaiting those reports, before we can pronounce whether we were involved in the cheating scandal. These schools are Bhekukwazi, Gala, Ndluyesilo, Mphemba, Mondini and Zinqobele. Once we have received the reports, we will institute our own disciplinary measures to ensure that this does not happen again.

ZO: The decline in matric passes from 72% to 64% should be a cause for concern, don’t you think?

Chonco: This drop could be attributed to the CAPS Curriculum, the inadequate level of training of our educators and the fact that most pupils failed maths and science. After doing examination analysis, we noted that schools who were implicated in the cheating scandal had a high enrolment, and most pupils had registered for maths and science.

ZO: How do you plan to remedy the situation?

Chonco: We need to start with an audit, and identify who is teaching maths? Is that teacher qualified to teach at a high school level? A classical example is Bhilibana High School in Nkandla, where we discovered that there were many teachers who did not qualify to teach at that school because they only have primary school level qualifications.

Our turnaround strategy revolves around encouraging schools to complete their curriculum earlier than usual. We will start with team visits at schools to be led by subject advisers and circuit managers.

We also want to start the Winter Classes earlier than normal, so that pupils have enough time to prepare.

We remain positive that we will bounce back, but this will also depend on the support of our community.

It is disturbing that already this year, we have witnessed unrest in some schools such as Qantayi and Mjabuliseni. This does not bode well for the future.