The Chairperson of the National Investigative Task Team (NITT), Professor Chika Sehoole, has confirmed that the child of a Human Resource Officer in the Department of Basic Education is among the 40 learners found to have cheated during the 2025 National Senior Certificate examinations.
Sehoole was speaking during the release of the task team’s interim report in Pretoria on Friday, following an investigation into a leak of matric examination papers from within the department.
He says once the breach was detected, the task team launched an investigation into ten schools, including three in the North West province.
“In the North West there were three suspected schools, and we added those to the seven identified by the DBE, making a total of ten schools investigated to identify learners with higher-than-expected marks,” Sehoole said.
The investigation examined the results of about 200 learners across the affected centres.
“The number of learners investigated per centre ranged from 17 to more than 200,” he added.
Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube says the interim findings point to a serious internal breach within the department’s secure examination environment.
“On the evidence available to date, the NITT reported that the breach originated within the DBE’s secure national examinations environment, where NSC question papers are set, processed and managed,” Gwarube said.
She added that a departmental official is alleged to have been directly linked to the leak.
“A DBE official whose child was an NSC 2025 candidate is alleged to have been involved in this breach, with the learner forming part of the distribution chain. The NITT is still verifying whether a second official was involved,” Gwarube said.
The breach, revealed by Gwarube in December, involved pupils at seven Pretoria schools accessing papers for English Home Language (papers 1, 2, and 3), Mathematics (papers 1 and 2) and Physical Science (papers 1 and 2) before the exams.
The Department of Basic Education says the two implicated officials have been suspended, and disciplinary hearings are expected to be finalised by February.
