09 February 2021
The Public Protector’s office has upheld Wits University’s decision not to readmit four medical students who failed to obtain minimum marks allowing them to progress to the next year of study, saying it had no competency to interfere with the university’s statutory arrangements and any attempt to do so would amount to rewriting the legislation, something they may not do.
This comes after a woman complained to the Public Protector’s office in May 2019 that Wits had unfairly excluded her son and three other students from readmission to Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBCh) programmes.
The woman took on the case on behalf of her son as well as three other students.
She claimed the students had been prejudiced by the implementation of the Standard Setting Tool by the university, She stated that, according to the Wits University’s Faculty of Health Sciences handbook, the pass mark for MBBCh degree was 60% from the third year of study. She alleged that the marks allocated to students were not raw, but calibrated. and also that the marking process used was a pilot project which the Faculty of Health Sciences was trying to implement as its Standard Setting Tool managed through the Cohen 60 system.
The Public Protector’s office said investigations revealed the Cohen 60 system applied to all medical students as implemented by the university, with some students passing and others failing the examination.
“There is no evidence to suggest that this system (Cohen 60) differentiated between students or categories of students based on any of the prohibited or listed grounds. There can be no question of other forms of discrimination in this particular instance since Cohen 60 assessment method applied to all students indiscriminately. The investigation has been closed,” the office said.
To this end, the Public Protector submits that institutions of higher learning are legally empowered to make their own determination on further rigors and standards that need to be met, and make their own choices of assessment methods to be used.
Adapted from original source: IOL
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