The year 2021 ushers in a new era for educator appraisals in our education system. The Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS) will be replaced by the Quality Management System (QMS) for school-based educators. The QMS is informed by Collective Agreement Number 2 of 2020 as agreed to by the employer and all employee parties at the Education Labour Relations Council (ELRC). The QMS is a performance management system for school-based educators, designed to evaluate the performance levels of individual teachers. QMS incorporates the following: Measuring the performance of educators in line with their respective roles and responsibilities; Providing a basis for decisions on mechanisms to recognise good performance and address under-performance; and Enhancing educator efficiency, effectiveness and good performance.

All members of School Management Teams (SMT) will be obliged to agree and sign off on a work plan with clear annual targets for improvement within the school.  Principals are now required to sign work plan agreements with their supervisors (i.e. Circuit Managers).

Whilst almost all principals have already been trained, Provincial Education Departments (PEDs) have commenced with the training of educators on post level 1 to 3 for the implementation process.

The DBE coordinated a virtual training session that was attended by Circuit Managers from the Northern Cape and Whole School Evaluations (WSE) supervisors from all provinces on 21 May 2021. The training was attended by a total of 135 participants. The purpose of the training was to capacitate the Circuit Managers and WSE supervisors to carry out their responsibilities pertaining to QMS. Circuit Managers are directly involved by conducting performance reviews and appraisals of principals, as well as monitoring implementation of the QMS within schools. WSE supervisors will have the responsibility of evaluating the implementation of the QMS during onsite external evaluations.

The QMS training programme is endorsed by the South African Council for Educators (SACE) and participants will acquire 5 PD points for participating in the activity. The successful virtual training session was facilitated by members of the ELRC constituted National Training Team.