Pretoria - The Department of Education has developed an action plan to co-ordinate and guide all interventions in the department in order to turn the education system around.
The plan, which will be known as Schooling 2025: The Department of Basic Education's Action Plan, will provide long-term solutions to the challenges facing the department, said Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga.
The plan will make provision for the monitoring of progress against a set of measurable indicators covering all aspects of basic education, including teacher recruitment and retention, learner enrolment and well-being, infrastructure, school funding, mass literacy and educational quality.
"The plan will establish key outcomes and performance deliverables for the entire education system, including the national and provincial departments.
"It will commit provinces and provincial education departments to clear, agreed-to outcomes and ensure that all in the system are accountable for attaining these outcomes," Motshekga said.
She reiterated that South Africa's learning outcomes continued to be unsatisfactory.
"All local and international assessments are agreed that far too many of our learners, especially African learners, do not perform at the required level.
"We have identified the underlying factors and we are determined to work systematically to resolve them," said Motshekga.
She added that the adoption of an outcomes approach in implementing government's priorities, announced by President Jacob Zuma in his State of the Nation Address, will ensure that the work of government is measured according to outcomes.
"The outcomes approach enables us to set measurable targets and deliverables, against which we and South Africa can monitor our progress in addressing the challenges in education that remain."
