5 Year Strategic Plan 2005/06 - Department of Education

ICT professional development of teachers, managers and administrators
Electronic content resources for teaching and learning
ICT infrastructure
Connectivity to an educational network and the Internet
Community engagement to share the resources with the wider community
Research and development into new technologies, methodologies and techniques.
Subsequent to the publication of the Draft White Paper was the requirement for all education
departments to develop business plans to guide the implementation of the policy. The ECDoE
produced and submitted costed business plan in March 2005.
This policy will have a major impact on teaching and learning as well as the administration in
our schools.
p a r t C : b a c k g r o u n d i n f o r m a t i o n
13.1.1 Quality Assurance
Quality Assurance is a concept that originally comes from the private sector even though its
relevance spans both the public and the private sector. Any organization that has a service or
goods to deliver needs to have a mechanism in place to guarantee that the service or the
goods will be in compliance with service or production standards that the organization itself
shall have set for itself. Quality Assurance ensures that the organization will have a
guaranteed niche, this niche being guaranteed by the extent to which quality defines the
services or goods the organization is associated with.
Quality as concept is a defining feature that sets an organization apart from others since it is a
tool that promotes excellence. Quality also ensures compliance of performance with mutually
agreed and set standards. There are quality principles and service standards that need to be
agreed upon by organizations that aspire to a quality service for their identified customers and
market. The global thrust for quality assurance is to establish within organizations a culture of
continuous improvement. The South African Excellence Framework presents a paradigm
within which quality becomes a visible yet continuously aspired to goal. Quality Assurance
initiatives are grounded in the National Education Policy Act No.27 of 1996 (NEPA). NEPA
created a legislative framework for both the Assessment Policy for the General Education and
Training Band, Grades R – 9 and ABET which prescribes that Systemic Evaluation studies
be conducted as well as the National Policy on Whole-school Evaluation (WSE)
The focus for the Education Department as an organization in respect of quality assurance is
both at system and school level with Systemic Evaluation being a tool that seeks to determine
and measure the health of the Education system at exit points of the Foundation, Intermediate
and the Senior Phases of the General Education and Training Band. The Grade 12 results for
now are still a determining measure for the quality of the performance of the education
system at the FET Phase. Whole-school Evaluation (WSE) focuses on the school system by
monitoring and evaluating the extent to which curriculum provision takes place. This is done
through a framework of nationally agreed criteria and guidelines. Nine nationally agreed areas
for evaluation form the basis on which the performance of each school as unit of the system is
evaluated. Whole-school Evaluation is now part of the Integrated Quality Management
System (IQMS).
Quality Management Systems, one of the mechanisms for assuring quality within education,
brings in a feedback loop through which the recommendations flowing from Systemic
Evaluation and Whole-school Evaluation are fed back into the system to guarantee
continuous improvement in terms of the performance of the education system.
The South African Excellence Foundation Model for quality service delivery provides a
structure/framework on which our various service delivery modes as the Department of
Education need to be located. Its fundamental concepts provide effective guidelines to take
any organization on a sure path to realizing excellence in its service delivery.
5 Year ECDoE Strategic Plan for 2005/06 2005-06 to to 2009/10. 2009-10. March 21 F (3).doc 2006 Page 54 50