The Department of Education is responsible for the administration and coordination of education in South Africa across all sectors, but each of the nine provinces has its own education department. Higher Education South Africa (HESA) is the umbrella body responsible for public higher education institutions, and the Council on Higher Education (CHE) advises the Minister of Education on strategic issues in higher education. The Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) promotes quality assurance, audits the quality assurance mechanisms, and accredits programmes of higher education institutions. The Council for Quality Assurance in General and Further Education and Training (UMALUSI) is the quality assurer for general and further education and training bands in the National Qualifications Framework (NQF).
Public spending on education was 6.0% of GDP in 2010.
In developing a long-term vision and strategic plan for South Africa the National Planning Commission has identified the main challenges confronting the country and examined their underlying causes. High-quality education is a key element of the Commission’s vision statement for the country.
Schooling 2025 is a long term plan for the basic education sector, presently a vision for each of the stakeholder groups – learners, teachers, principals and parents – and for learning and teaching materials, and buildings and facilities; the vision is to be realised by the year 2025. An action plan setting out 27 national goals towards realisation of the first stage of this long-term plan (2010–14) was launched in 2010. 13 of these goals are output goals dealing with better school results and better enrolment of learners in schools; the remaining 14 goals are concerned with things that must happen for the output goals to be realised.
The Department’s plan for 2007-11 embodied government’s commitment to make quality education available to all people. Strategies have been deployed to ensure that no child be excluded from schooling due to financial constraints – by increasing the number of ‘no-fee schools’ and strengthening the fee-exemption regulations. At the same time, subsidies and bursaries are available for further education and teacher training.
The Department of Education launched a mass adult-literacy campaign in 2008, which was intended to reach 4.7 million adults above the age of 15 and enable them to become literate and numerate in one of the eleven official languages. Achieving this goal will enable South Africa to reach its United Nations’ Education For All commitment to halving the country’s illiteracy rates by 2015. By 2012, there were an additional 1.9 million newly literate people.
