Education Report

In line with ref.[1], for the benefit of European citizens, three major goals should be achieved by 2010:(1) to improve the quality of education and training systems,(2) to ensure that education is accessible to everybody, and (3) to open up education and training to the wider world.

2014

Education Reform Initiative team continues to produce a consistent, comprehensive, and critical evaluation of education policies and their implementation through its annual Education Monitoring Reports. In Education Monitoring Report 2013 the following topics had been addressed: (1) The organizational restructure of Ministry of National Education (MoNE), public expenditures on education; (2) participation in education at all levels, developments in special education; (3) the competency and appointment of teachers, including field testing for teacher candidates; (4) changes in the schedule of classes and curricula, elective courses, the distribution of students according to program types, open secondary education, the decline of school types and the transformation of general high schools the newly applied test Transition from Primary to Secondary Education (TEOG); and (5) developments following the passage of “4+4+4” compulsory education law, transformed facilities, and dual education. In the final section of the report, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 is analyzed in the Turkish context.

Fact 1 Wide Access Despite the impact of HIV and AIDS and poverty generally, the overwhelming majority of children are enrolled in primary schools, and relative to countries with similar levels of development, a high proportion of young people go onto secondary education. Fact 2 High and Equalised Education Expenditure At 5.4% of GDP, South African spending on education is high by comparable standard. Furthermore, in the past decade, the government has made significant progress in equalizing inter-and intra-provincial government spending. Fact 3 Failing Primary School Language and Mathematics Nationally, 72% of all Grade 6 learners failed a national literacy test in 2004. In mathematics, the figue is substantially higher, with 88% of all Grade 6 learners failing to achieve the curriculum standard. Given the centrality of reading, writing and arithmetic not only to all further learning, but also to most jobs in the information economy, the poor performance of South Africa's primary schools in providing basic education must constitute one of the countries most urgent problems. Fact 4 Huge Achievement Gap South Africa's levels of inequality are revealed by crosscountry testing programmes to be the highest by a large margin among participating countries. The point is illustrated by results from tests administered in the Western Cape, which show that, while four out of five children in former white primary schools read at the right level, less than half of learners attending former Coloured primary schools can read at grade level and only four children in a hundred in former DET schools are reading at the prescribed level. Fact 5 Comparative Perspective on Low Achievement The mean score on the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) place South African Grade 8 learners at the very bottom of 50 participating countries. Similar trends are evident in other cross-national studies of quality, where South Africa performs badly compared to a number of much poorer countries. Fact 6 Low Output in Higher Grade Mathematics Of the total population of 18 year olds (about 980,000) less than 140,000 pass Grade 12 mathematics, and only some 20 000 to 25 000 (2.5%) pass the subject at higher grade. Fact 7 Ineffectiveness of the educational bureaucracy The implementation of policy with respect to schools is heavily dependent on the effectiveness of provincial departments of education. While there is considerable variation across and within provinces, it is fair to say that most parts of the system exhibit low levels of functionality, while significant parts are essentially dysfunctional. For example, in her budget speech of 2007 the Minister of Education conceded that by no means the full Treasury allocation for QIDS UP had been used for this purpose in the provinces in the last year. Similarly, poor procurement and distribution of books and desks to schools leaves many schools heavily undersupplied with basic education resources. Fact 8 Shortages of Technical Skills The the government/business Joint Initiative on Priority Skills for South Africa (JIPSA) estimates that, at the current rate of production, only some 40% of the required number of artisans in engineering and related fields will be available to cope with economic needs between 2007 and 2010. Similarly, the construction and engineering industries are experiencing shortages in the managerial, professional and technological fields, and JIPSA estimates that production of skills in these fields need to be increased by some 20% in order to meet the demands of the growing economy. Fact 9 Poor Throughput in Higher Education Half of admitted students drop out of the system without receiving a tertiary qualification. The throughput rate in minimal time in engineering is around 35% at the best institutions and between 5-10% at the others. The comparable throughput rates in East African, Indian and US institutions are around 80-90%. Fact 10 Education and Unemployment Around half of all learners that spend some time in secondary school or equivalent do not find work. Initiative 1 Professionalising the bureaucracy The importance accorded by central government to the task of building systemic capacity is indicated by fact that cabinet has taken charge of directing the development of the education bureaucracy, as part of a larger process of strengthening the civil service. A cabinet legotla in June 2006 laid out a carefully structured activity plan for achieving these ends. Although the targets set by the cabinet process have proved too ambitious, there is no doubt that this process is on the right track, and already effects are being felt in some provinces. However, there is a very long way to go on this issue and a long-term commitment by central government to improving the capacity of departments of education is required if significant efficiency gains are to be achieved. Initiative 2 Literacy programmes The Department of Education has started to develop a number of policies in the area of literacy. These include a 'toolkit' for schools, which describes methods of teaching reading and writing and provides benchmarks for each school quarter and grade, a simple test for early reading which is intended for use by teachers in assessing learner progress, and the Drop All and Read campaign aimed at publicizing the need to set aside time for reading at school. However, these elements do not add up to anything like a coherent national literacy programme, and indeed the three provincial initiatives appear to be taking little direction from the national level.

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Public Service Accountability Monitor, 2018

2007

Evaluative research on the impact of effective professional learning in curricular and co-curricular physical activity in primary schools

2013

Annual reports provide a useful way of learning about the priorities and outcomes of a government department. In the Remote Education Systems project (Guenther, 2012), we are trying to understand how the system measures success, what kind of indicators they use and what the basic philosophical assumptions behind a good education are. An analysis of five Australian jurisdictional annual reports from 2011-12 was conducted to consider these points. We first looked at stated mission, vision and goal statements and how the departments intend to achieve these. Next we considered the indicators used to assess whether or how well the vision was achieved.

International Encyclopedia of Education 4th Ed, 2022

This chapter examines one of the most influential publications in the field of international education development, the Global Education Monitoring Report (GEM Report), formerly known as the Education for All Global Monitoring Report (GMR). This chapter explores the context in which the GEM Report series emerged and how it came to be: (a) an established mechanism to track national, regional and global progress toward Education For All and international education targets; and (b) a key reference for education policymaking and monitoring among multilateral and bilateral aid agencies, national governments, non-governmental organizations and foundations. The chapter situates the Report series within the historical evolution of UNESCO and the EFA movement; provides insight into the nature, structure, financing, and production of the Report series; and discusses relevant critiques and evaluations. Given an increasingly uncertain and disruptive global education policy landscape, primarily due to the pandemic's impact and other global challenges, the final section explores the future role of the Report series.