The Integrated Strategic Planning Framework for Teacher Education and Development in South Africa 2011-2025 puts forward improved and expanded teacher education and development opportunities in order to improve the quality of teaching and learning in schools. It addresses the call to ‘reopen the colleges’ in a variety of ways, so as to improve teachers’ - and prospective teachers’ - access to quality education and development opportunities.

 

Teachers are called on to make this new and improved Strategic Planning Framework for Teacher their own. Teachers are called on to join hands in securing the short- and long-term possibilities described in the Plan. Much of what the Plan offers will start immediately and unfold over the next 15 years. Teachers will be kept informed of available teacher development opportunities as they unfold over time. Our country needs to take care of our education needs today, as well as to build a solid foundation for future generations of teachers who follow in our footsteps.

 

Teachers will be helped to take responsibility for their own professional development.

Teachers can do this by:

• Learning how to identify gaps in subject knowledge through (i) interpreting learners’ results in national and other assessments; and (ii) taking user-friendly online and/or paper-based diagnostic tests in specific subject/ learning areas;
• Actively learning with colleagues in Professional Learning Communities (PLCs);
• Accessing funding to do quality-assured courses that are content rich and pedagogically strong and that address their individual needs;
• Understanding the curriculum and learning support materials, preparing lessons and delivering them competently; and
• Signing up with the SACE Continuing Professional Teacher Development (CPTD) Management System and achieving the target number of Professional Development (PD) points.

By involving themselves in these activities teachers will ensure that each one is the author of their own professional development journey.

 

Teachers will be supported in a number of ways to identify and address their own professional development needs:

• Interpreting learner performance
• Diagnostic self-assessment tests
• Working with their peers
• Accessing development opportunities
• Keeping up-to-date with opportunities
• Making time for professional development

Needs will be identified based on national learner assessments like the National Senior Certificate (NSC) and the Annual National Assessments (ANA), as well as through research into the qualification profiles of practising teachers from Grade R to Grade 12.

 

---

 

This is a Plan for professional development. Professional development is done by teachers, not to teachers. Professional development starts with finding out what needs developing, then closing those gaps by whatever means are available.

Stakeholder bodies have put the Plan together and are responsible for ensuring that it is implemented, but in the end the Plan will succeed because teachers grasp the new opportunities with both hands.

For more information

The full-length version of the Integrated Strategic Planning Framework for Teacher Education and Development in South Africa, together with the Technical Report which informed the choices made in the Plan, are available on the links on the right.