Basic Education Director-General, Mr Mathanzima Mweli, this week, wrapped up the first phase of his annual online engagements with provincial and district officials, circuit managers, subject advisors and school principals across all nine provinces. The engagements commenced on 27 January with the Northern Cape Province and ended with the Eastern Cape Province on 10 February 2026. Mr Mweli expressed his heartfelt appreciation to the provinces for their comprehensive presentations, whilst singling out school principals as the true foot soldiers, committed to making a difference at classroom level, where it matters the most.

Mr Mweli added that the New Leaders Foundation has, in their presentation, highlighted the importance of the use of data as part of the Data Driven Districts (DDD) South African School Administration and Management System (SA-SAMS) by supplying relevant data that is transformed into clear, practical insights for monitoring purposes for targeted support, improved planning, and strengthened learner outcomes across the education system to gain competitive advantage. He also made reference to the presentations made by the DBE research team, Prof Martin Gustafsson, DBE Researcher, and Dr Stephen Taylor, Director for Research, Monitoring and Evaluation on the Thematic Analysis of District Presentations. Provinces and districts are encouraged to optimise the use of data sets to improve analysis and monitoring for improvement in sector priority areas. This also assists with improved sector audits by the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA).

The engagement with the Western Cape Province was chaired by Mr Paddy Padayachee, DDG for Business Intelligence, on behalf of Mr Mweli. Western Cape Education HoD, Mr Brent Walters, warmly welcomed all delegates, encouraging robust engagements during the session, which was attended by approximately 1,700 online officials on 6 February 2026: “This is an opportunity for deliberations, and I am looking forward to fruitful discussions on a wide range of topics affecting the sector. Our province needs to keep our focus on balancing quality and quantity; we are performing well in respect of retention but should provide additional support to progressed learners. Education requires consistency and creating a belief in the learners to, in turn, create a belief in themselves for every learner to become the best version of themselves”. The provincial presentation was delivered by Mr Juan Benjamin, Chief Director for Curriculum and his competent team. In conclusion, he acknowledged Mr Mweli’s comments on the achievements, but also on the remaining challenges and indicated that the province remains committed to working alongside the DBE to improve learning outcomes such as Foundations for Learning; progressed learners; and infrastructure. 

DG Mweli congratulated the Western Cape on the improvement of the Class of 2025 performance: “The province recorded a pass rate of 88.20%; and continues to be amongst the top five performing provinces, registering improved throughput and performance in Mathematics. In 2025 they managed to claw back to be amongst the top 10 and 20 districts in the country, especially in districts where teaching is quite challenging. He also commended the province for pulling out all the stops to deal with admission challenges as this was an Achilles heel in both the Western Cape and Gauteng.

Dr Naledi Mbube-Mehana, DDG for Transformation Special Programmes, spoke to the implementation of Mother Tongue-based Bilingual Education (MTbBE), analysing the language demographics and 2025 Term 4 performance to focus on challenges and opportunities for language vitality within the province, making clear distinctions between Foundations of Learning and Foundations for Learning. She cautioned against cumulative disfluency and added that more work needs to be done to carry gains into the Senior and FET phase. “The reading problem is a language problem, MTbBE is not a quick fix but a deliberate, long-term investment in the futures of South African learners and everyone must move in concert towards implementation”.