Moderation shows surgery exam marking was fair – CMSA

Times Live 12 October 2019

The surgery exams failed by most of the country’s final-year students were fairly marked, the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa (CMSA) has said – after the results of an international moderation process were released on Tuesday, writes Katharine Child for Times Live.

The CMSA, a non-profit body which runs, sets and marks the exams for doctors and dentists to become specialists, faced an outcry when only 24 of 54 of the final surgery specialists-in-training passed their written exams. The pass mark was first reported as only 14 out of 46. The entire final-year surgery class of the universities of the Witwatersrand, Stellenbosch and Pretoria failed their final written exams.

In September, University of Cape Town students wrote a legal letter to CMSA and said they may institute a court review of the process and ask to see every script. The CMSA asked three international organisations to check the exams and their marking, rather than using local surgeons. The results from the American College of Surgeons, the West African College of Surgeons and a third body were released last Tuesday, and have shown the exam results were correct, said Flavia Senkubuge, CMSA president.
Full report on the Times Live site

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