Common Testing at grade 11

This was a very good initiative and I believe that we have benefited as educators and needless to say the learners are really finding this external examination in a common testing fashion very useful to prepare them for grade 12.

The only thing that has destroyed it altogether, is the management of examination papers. The are schools that write these papers at their convenient dates. That obviously nullifies the whole exercise. I don't think they serve any purpose for the schools where learners have had access to the examination paper and then write the same paper for formal assessment purposes.

There is a need for the DoE to review the channel of communicating the papers to schools and apply strict control if really we still need to benefit out of this exercise. Otherwise, other options must be explored. For an example, the use of technology. We need to go with times! These papers can be available on line on password protected fashion that is per school. Once the school has downloaded the paper, there should a record of date and time. Then there will be a tracking system to check who had the paper downloaded on the unauthorised date/time. There are lots of opportunities that were can explore. They are also very cost efficient as well. We just need to have the right mind and will to change.

Comments welcome!