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Pretoria – A task team has been set up to investigate how a Life Sciences matric exam paper was leaked in Limpopo, the Basic Education Minister announced on Tuesday. The task team will be charged with establishing the source of the security breach as well as the spread of the access to the question paper. Among the possible outcomes of the scale of the leak is that learners at the affected school could be asked to rewrite the exam.

Government’s plan to draft in a policy to target qualification fraud is expected to reap positive results for South Africa, including ensuring that South African tertiary institutions are not robbed of the reverence many of them have earned for decades. One of the main benefits would be that CV verification will become standardised, ensuring accuracy and no room for deviation, in both the public and private sectors.

The Deputy President says a proposal to deal with the problem of fake qualifications is being prepared and will soon be presented to Cabinet for approval. He said the Minister of Higher Education and Training has already requested that the South African Qualifications Authority establish a national register to list names of individuals who have misrepresented their qualifications or who have invalid qualifications.

Forty-two bogus colleges and universities which offered fake and unaccredited programmes have been shut down, the Department of higher education and training said. They include three bogus universities which purported to be US-based and offered degrees in 15 days. They are Barkley University, Study for Career Success and the Fargo University.

The SA Qualifications Authority (SAQA) is introducing new regulations on the evaluation of qualifications obtained from foreign institutions to curb the scourge of fake degrees. SAQA has also introduced new security features on its certificate of evaluation which compared the foreign qualification with those offered in South Africa.

The private college in Athlone, Cape Town, where 46 candidates cheated during the 2014 matric exams, has fired its principal. "Thus far, the school has dismissed the principal who was head of the examinations, and has accepted the resignation of two teachers who admitted to being involved", Stonefountain College Director said.

The Department of Higher Education has warned students to be wary of "registered" private colleges which offer certificates, diplomas and degrees but do not have its stamp of approval. A department spokesman expressed concern about the current trend whereby institutions secured registration for one or two programmes, and then used this status as a cover to offer other unregistered courses.

A senior African academic has lost his job for the second time after an Australian university that appointed him in January belatedly discovered he had been forced to quit his South African post the previous November following charges of serial plagiarism.