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Minister Gwarube’s Focuses on Standards and Outcomes in Education

Statement by Desiree van der Walt MP – DA Spokesperson on Basic Education:

The DA’s Siviwe Gwarube, Minister of Basic Education, made two announcements today that will drive a higher level of standards and outcomes in education, and fundamentally alter South Africa’s education landscape for generations to come.

Massive expansion of ECD centres

Minister Gwarube reported that just over 13 300 Early Childhood Development centres were registered over the past year, and over 1.2 million more children are now accessing registered ECD programmes.

The drive to expand access to ECD is central to the Minister’s focus on building the foundations of learning, which international experience shows has an outsized impact on education outcomes.

Together with expanded ECD access, the Minister’s focus is on foundational literacy and numeracy, including targeted training for 10 000 Foundation Phase teachers, strengthened reading benchmarks, phonics programmes in African languages, and increased support for early-grade teaching through the Funza Lushaka bursary programme.

These are practical reforms that will give every child an opportunity to learn, grow, graduate and make their way in the world one day as adults.

A new way of reporting Matric results

The Minister also announced today a completely new way of presenting Matric results each year. In future, the Department will rank provincial performance through an inclusive basket of indicators focused on education quality.

This “Quality Basket” will include the overall pass percentage, Bachelor pass attainment, distinctions, participation and performance in gateway subjects (like Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Accounting), as well as the learner retention rate.

This system will give South Africans a more honest picture of quality, participation progression and subject depth. It will also motivate schools to focus on all the indicators that matter, not just on the percentage of learners who pass matric exams.

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