The Department of Education in Limpopo has discounted the rumour that there was another Life Sciences paper leak in Vhembe.

Panic buttons were raised on Friday when a rumour started doing the rounds that the paper that was to be written that morning had leaked and had been seen by pupils at one of the secondary schools around Thohoyandou again.

The rumour follows on the heels of the previous leak that affected 17 000 pupils in the Vhembe area.

The first leak was detected at Marude Secondary School, but further investigations by the department allegedly revealed that it had spread to faraway places such as Gauteng and Mpumalanga, but the only pupils who were to rewrite were from Vhembe.

The new leak rumour started doing the rounds on Thursday when a listener on one of the local radio stations allegedly called to say there were pupils with the new paper. The rumour was further compounded when the paper supposed to be written at 9:00 was written at 11:00.

Asked for comment on the new allegations, the Limpopo education spokesperson, Dr Naledzani Rasila, said that after the first leak they had tightened their security. "Firstly, there is no leak whatsoever; if there was any, that would have come to our attention very fast. I was working here in Thohoyandou and would have picked it up very fast. After the first leak we upgraded our security in terms of storage and delivery of the examination papers," he said.

He further indicated that the examinations had been scheduled for 11:00 and that the second paper would be written at the same time.