ANC wants education assessments to go ahead
The African National Congress’s national general council (NGC) has resolved that the basic education department forge ahead with the annual national assessments (ANAs), the party’s education, health, and technology subcommittee said on Sunday.
“The commission has affirmed the importance of ANAs. We cannot stop such an important strategy in basic education,” chairwoman Naledi Pandor said at the NGC meeting in Midrand, Johannesburg.
Teacher’s unions have opposed implementation of the ANAs, citing issues in education that need to be attended to first. The ANAs were supposed to take place in November.
“Where there may be disputes on its implementation processes there are processes of review which have already been set in motion to resolve them… but we cannot allow the dropping of ANAs,” Pandor said.
None of the tri-partite alliance members within the commission opposed the resolution, she said.
“Not a single one of the alliance partners stood up against this. Our view is that this is an important strategy for education; other countries do it,” Pandor said.