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Mail & Guardian reports that teachers and teacher unions have slammed a Department of Basic Education (DBE) plan to outsource the setting of exam questions at a cost of millions of rands.
Setting questions for tests and exams, including the matric exams, has always been a core responsibility of teachers and, with the exception of those setting matric papers, they are not paid extra for this duty. The DBE has put out a tender inviting bidders with the capability to develop “a world-class repository of questions” to apply for the contract. A successful bidder will have to provide 500 questions for subjects in certain grades that will be stored in an item bank. These will be used to draw up question papers for, among others, end-of-year exams. Some education experts have welcomed the move, but Mugwena Maluleke of the SA Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) remarked: “Outsourcing says that you don’t have confidence in the system you are running as a minister or a director general. Second, it says you don’t have confidence in the people who are sitting with the child for seven hours a day.” Basil Manuel of the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of SA (Naptosa) commented: “You will be deprofessionalising the profession because you are taking away one of their primary responsibilities.”
- Read this report by Prega Govender in full at Mail & Guardian
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