Approximately 49 of 75 education districts have been successfully engaged through the Education District and Learner Support Programme, implemented by DBE's Director-General, Mr Mathanzima Mweli, to ensure quality and efficiency in the Basic Education Sector. Director-General Mweli frequently engages education district officials in this fashion to put education districts to task in terms of supporting primary and secondary schools in the country. Mr Mweli has therefore institutionalised the Education District and Learner Support Programme to collate education data, depicting districts' intervention strategies aimed at improving learning outcomes at the General Education and Training (GET) level and beyond.

Director-General Mweli officially wrapped up his Education District Support Programme and series of engagement sessions with education officials in the Frances Baard and John Taolo Gaetsewe Education Districts in the Northern Cape last week. The DG covered Northern Cape districts on 28 April in Namakwa; 29 April, ZF Mgcawu; 30 April, Pixley ka Seme; 11 May, Frances Baard and 12 May, John Taolo Gaetsewe, respectively. A total of six out of the nine provinces and 49 (65%) out 75 districts have been covered so far. According to the DBE, the Education District Support Programme has become a mirror through which the education district officials reflect on their blind spots for urgent intervention.

Director for Intergovernmental and Technical Support in the Office of the Director-General, Ms Mataole Ramohapi, reflected on key insights shared across education districts that participated in the DG's engagement sessions: "As we engaged education districts from one province to the other, it has been clear that challenges encountered in the Foundation, Intermediate, Senior Phases and Further Education and Training have some level of similarities. For instance, many education districts alerted us that a shortage of education specialists and Home Language teachers for the Foundation Phase could be factors compromising learner performance in Home Languages and Mathematics. The same issues were reported in the data presented in the two districts that recently participated in the DG's programme in Northern Cape. The strengthening of Early Childhood Development (ECD) and GET assessment were broadly discussed during the recent DG's engagement sessions”.

Dr Mark Chetty, Director for National Assessments at the DBE, weighed in on the Department’s efforts towards improving foundational learning in the sector. “In 2025, the DBE launched the first round of Mother Tongue-based Bilingual Education (MTbBE) assessment at the Grade 4 level. The design of the MTbBE assessments is to provide learners with greater access to answer test questions in their mother-tongue or home language, thereby reducing historical language disadvantage and bringing greater instructional alignment between teaching, learning and assessment. The MTbBE assessments will be expanded to Grade 5 in 2026, and further incremental upscaling is planned for 2027 and 2028 in higher grades. The Department must remain steadfast in its rollout of MTbBE from ECD into formal schooling. This will allow for the design of assessment metrics in GET to have greater validity and reliability in providing the sector with improved evidence to strengthen foundations of learning. The fundamentals of learning in literacy and numeracy are key to any future success of learners. The sector needs to give greater attention to teaching, learning and assessment in the foundational grades committed to an MTbBE rollout as a singular strategy of aligning instruction to outcomes. This must be the key driver of change in the sector that rallies support of all units in the Department”.

Dr Chetty added that “the DBE has also made progress on integrating the General Education Certificate (GEC) assessment model into the formal programme of assessment in Grade 9. The GEC is currently in its second year of implementation with almost 7,000 schools participating in the programme in 2026. In April, the DBE conducted a National Training Workshop with more than 270 provincial officials representing Curriculum, Assessment, Teacher Development, EMIS and Inclusive Education units. This integrated approach to roll out has enabled greater institutionalisation of the GEC at provincial and district levels. PEDs will undertake further training and support to participating schools in the coming weeks in preparation for the external GEC assessment tasks planned for the third and fourth school terms. The GEC has been designed to represent a culmination of knowledge and skills from Grade R to Grade 9. It signals to the system what the desired standards are to be achieved by the end of GET. The emphasis on fundamental skills on reading literacy and numeracy are key features of the GEC in terms of its integrated project work and curriculum benchmark tests. The GEC also emphasises the importance of essential skills needed for learners to be competent in the 21st Century. The Department will be expanding the training and rollout of its Assessment for Learning strategy in 2026 to assist teachers and subject advisors to better understand how assessment data can be used in their school-based assessment to improve learning. Teacher unions have endorsed this initiative and have complimented the Department’s rollout by training their membership”.