Durban - The Annual National Assessment (ANA) of schools has been scrapped this year.
Instead, schools will decide if and when they wish to assess pupils in a manner appropriate to the school.
The school will also mark the tests and the results will be for the school’s own internal diagnostic purposes – and it will not be compulsory.
This is the core of an agreement between five teacher unions and the Department of Basic Education, overseen by the Education Labour Relations Council – and which was due to be signed on Thursday.
The unions and the Education Department have been at loggerheads for months over the assessments, with Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga insisting children write the exams on December 1. Unions swore this would not happen.
The Education Department has now stepped back and agreed that a sample of ANA tests will be administered by an independent agent at 2 100 schools across the country. Dates for these are to be released within five days.
These sample tests will be marked by an outside agency – not teachers.
Basic Education spokesman Elijah Mhlanga said Motshekga was to meet the Council of Education Ministers (CEM) – the nine MECs – on Thursday morning before issuing a statement, because the mediation process was to conclude on Thursday.
“The mediation process is still ongoing. They met on Tuesday and they will meet again on Thursday. The minister is also meeting the CEM, so there will be a statement issued after that meeting,” he said.
The department is to announce the criteria for the selected schools, and the criteria used to select independent “agents” by next week.
The teacher unions – Sadtu, Naptosa, SAOU, Natu and PEU – vowed in September that none of their members would administer the ANAs, while Motshekga insisted the assessments would be written.
She had agreed with unions weeks earlier that the ANAs would not be written this year, before being swayed by the MECs.
The draft agreement reads: “The agent will be responsible for the administration and collection of the tests, marking of the tests and the final resulting and reporting.
“Teachers will not be involved in this process. In the selected schools the writing of the ANA as described will be optional for learners who are not part of the sample.”
It is understood that the sample for each selected school is only 25 pupils per school.
“The department is reluctant to issue the names of the schools until the test is written, to minimise the risk of the sample being compromised by prepping,” the agreement reads.
A union member, who spoke to the Daily News on Wednesday, said they were happy to put the ANA issue behind them.
He explained that the sampled ANA was to make sure the department met its obligations with the Treasury, because more than R200 million had been allocated for the writing of the assessments this financial year.
“The mediation has run its course after weeks of behind-the-scenes discussions and debates. We meet again today when we will put a final proposal on the table which is based on the inputs of the last few weeks,” he said.
“The passage of time has caught up with us, there was no way we were going to be able to write in December, and the minister has realised that trying to force the issue puts her up against the unions and teachers, and it is the principals who would have been the easiest target in all of this because they would have clashed with teachers,” he said.
Education analysts welcomed the compromise, saying it was a step in the right direction.
Dr Vijay Reddy, head of the research programme on Education and Skills Development at the Human Sciences Research Council, said it was a “reasonable compromise situation” that could benefit schools
“Everybody was sceptical about the extent to which national assessment would be carried out. Given the timing of the assessment, when schools had finished exams, it was very difficult to get pupils into the mode of studying for something after their exams. Some don’t come in to schools after exams, so you are not going to get a a fair assessment,” Reddy said.
Dr Nick Taylor, of JET education services, said: “The primary use of these tests should be for teachers and schools themselves so that they can improve their teaching.”
Principals and their deputies at six Durban schools admitted confusion and frustration over the ANA issue.
The principals and schools are not being named to protect them from being sanctioned by the department.
One south Durban high school principal said they were prepared to write the assessments despite the tensions it could possibly cause.
“We have to divorce ourselves from union matters once we are principals, we have to apply the rules of the employer that are sent to us. As a school we have had no discussion with teachers, but we have a loyal staff complement, we are hoping that although the timing of the ANAs is terrible this year, that they will administer the exams,” said the principal.
Another principal said “everything is up in the air” and said they had to carry out their duties.
“It’s tough because nobody wants to be sanctioned by the department, so we have to go ahead with it.”
A Morningside primary school principal said they were ready to administer the exams.
“We are in the dark with a lot of the information, but until anything changes we are writing,” he said.
A Chatsworth principal said the situation was tense because most of the teachers at the school were part of unions and had already insisted they would not oversee exams.
A Shallcross principal said they were told they would not write until next year.
Daily News
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