NATIONAL NEWS - Education experts say there is nothing fishy about the standardisation process used by the Council for Quality Assurance in Further Education and Training‚ Umalusi‚ in the wake of criticism of the process by the Democratic Alliance (DA).

In an open letter addressed to Umalusi CEO Dr Mafu Rakometsi‚ DA education spokesman Gavin Davis suggested that the methodology employed for mark adjustments in matric results was unsound.

This is something Umalusi has strongly denied.

Adjustments take place each year to ensure matric results are comparable year on year‚ even though the exam papers differ.

In the letter‚ Davis suggested that marks were adjusted in subjects where scores were low in the absence of evidence that the question papers were more difficult.

Davis said: “According to Umalusi and the Department of Basic Education (DBE)‚ adjusting the raw mark upwards is justified if the exam paper was demonstrably more difficult (ie‚ more cognitively demanding) than previous years. However‚ no evidence has been put forward to demonstrate that these papers were of a higher standard.

“I noticed at the standardisation meeting that the starting point for adjusting the marks was not the papers themselves‚ but the results. In cases when the raw mark was worse than last year’s‚ the DBE went back to the paper and found difficult questions to explain the drop in the raw mark. The DBE then motivated for the raw mark to be adjusted upwards accordingly.”