Education department postpones annual national assessments
The writing of the Annual National Assessments (ANA) has been postponed to next year, the national education department announced on Friday.
The announcement came after threats from teacher unions to boycotts the ANA – a series of tests for learners between grades one and nine to test their numeracy and literacy levels.
“The three major teacher unions: SADTU [South African Democratic Teachers Union], NAPTOSA [National Professional Teachers Organisation of South Africa], and SAOU [Suid-Afrikaanse Onderwysunie] have over recent weeks publicly expressed concerns about the administration of the annual national assessment,” the department said in a statement.
“The main concern of the teacher unions related to the frequency of the administration of ANA, its administrative demands, which did not leave enough time and room for improvement strategies to take root, before learners are re-assessed.”
The department met with the unions this week, agreeing that the ANA, which would have taken place next week, should be postponed to February next year.
“It was agreed that the schooling environment, given the prevailing conditions and union concerns to the administration of ANA, was not conducive to the writing of this very significant test, which provides valuable information on learner performance at the national, provincial, district and school level. ”
“It was also agreed that the frequency of these tests need to be reviewed and therefore a task team comprising the teacher unions and the DBE [department of basic education] will be immediately constituted to support the department in the re-modelling of the ANA so that the re-designed version of National Assessment can be launched next year.”