As the matric class of 2026 start their road to high school finals, Umalusi has admitted that one “unending” issue plagues it year after year.
The quality assurance body briefed parliament’s portfolio committee on basic education and the select committee on education, science and creative industries on Tuesday, describing examination irregularities as a recurring headache.
‘Unending cases’ of irregularities
When presenting its overview on the November 2025 National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations in January, Umalusi flagged “the unending cases of irregularities that are uncovered on an annual basis”. This includes the phenomenon of group copying.
Umalusi CEO Dr Mafu Rakometsi said that the 2025 quality assurance reports indicated “that the phenomenon of group copying affects all the qualifications, albeit in varying degrees”.
“At the same time, we remain seriously concerned that particular provinces recur in the reports dealing with such malpractices.
“We urge all provincial education departments and private assessment bodies to tighten their systems to protect the overall credibility of the examinations,” Rakometsi added.
The admission raises questions about whether the problem will persist into the 2026 examination cycle.
Tshwane paper leaks ‘localised’
Umalusi also updated members of parliament (MPs) on the leakage of NSC Mathematics Papers 1 and 2, Physical Sciences Papers 1 and 2, and English Home Language Papers 1 to 3 in Tshwane.
The National Investigation Task Team (NITT) presented its findings to Umalusi’s executive committee on 6 January 2026.
According to the findings, the “leak was contained to around 40 candidates out of a total population of approximately 600 000 who wrote the examination in the three subjects”.
The affected subjects included Physical Sciences (204 957 candidates), Mathematics (254 413) and English HL (135 090).
Umalusi assured parliament that “the breach was localised and therefore cannot dent the overall credibility of the 2025 NSC results”.
However, it confirmed that the NITT is still probing incidents of group copying reported in Mpumalanga across multiple examination centres and subjects.
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Four persistent challenges
Umalusi told MPs that irregularities are not the only threat facing the National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations.
In its briefing, the council outlined three additional systemic challenges that continue to undermine the integrity and credibility of the country’s matric exams.
One of the major concerns is what Umalusi described as “the phenomenon of disallowing candidates from writing the examinations to improve the pass rate at the school level”
Umalusi also flagged errors in approved examination question papers as another ongoing risk. While the council did not quantify the number of errors in 2025, it acknowledged that such mistakes affect the credibility and smooth administration of the exams.
Financial constraints
The quality assurance body further told parliament that limited funding continues to hamper its ability to conduct quality assurance at the desired scale. As a result, monitoring remains restricted.
In the 2025 examination cycle, only 200 out of 6 948 examination centres, just 3%, were monitored. Similarly, only 27 of 192 marking centres (14%) were sampled for oversight.
Umalusi warned that these limitations reduce the scope of oversight and make it more difficult to detect and prevent irregularities.
It stressed that “adequate funding is essential to expand quality assurance to strengthen the credibility of the qualifications”.
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