| 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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External project managers were appointed to the project and some internal departmental staff were seconded to the project. This allowed for a parallel intervention that was also up skilling people who already worked in the system. Strong links were created with the curriculum section to ensure that one message was given to schools and districts. The projected was implemented by contracting 13 NGOs with expertise in language and mathematics. These NGOS supplied 472 coaches to the project and these coaches supported teachers in their classrooms in areas of content, classroom management and pedagogy. Over and above this, district officials were brought into the process to assist with institutional requirements and also to assist with institutional change.
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| 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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The design of the initiative emerged as a collaboration between the political leadership, senior managers within the public service and outside university-based academics. During the implementation stages of the project, the alternations and adaptations were made based on contributions from the literacy and mathematics NGOs, insights from McKinsey and Company (that provided pro bono consulting support), teacher unions, formal evaluators and university-based academics. The management team developed a strong learning culture that permitted new insights and approaches to be incorporated into the initiative in dynamic way.
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| 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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During Phase I of the project (2010-2014), more than 98% of the budget for the project was allocated out of the normal provincial education budget. The province reprioritized existing budget items and aligned them around the initiative. The first year, 2010 was primarily a planning year, but by the second year (2011), approximately R52 million rand was allocated to project activities with a further R60 million being spent on LTSM. In 2012, this figure rose to R234million for project activities and R90 million for LTSM. In 2013 R234 million was again allocated to project activities with the LTSM budget just facilitating short falls and top ups. During the formative phase, pro bono funding was provided by McKinsey and Company for approximately R10 million in 2011/12 and R12 million 2013/14 from McKinsey’s Social Investment Fund.
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| 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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The project is effective at three levels: input, process and outcomes. The level of inputs, the project has been very successful at reprioritising and aligning existing department spending to focus on changing the core instructional practice of underperforming schools. The project has made significant progress towards achieving its objectives within the existing Departmental allocations. In addition to this important achievement, on the level of inputs, the project initiated, commission and deployed innovative sets of graded readers in four African languages, a first in South Africa. These materials will now be available to all provinces. The project has had a major success in changing teachers’ attitudes towards classroom visits/monitoring. An estimated 94 000 classroom visits have been successfully completed in the project since 2011, which is likely to constitute more classroom visits that occurred in the entire country over the past eighteen years. There is growing evidence that the project may also be reducing sick-leave and increased the amount of time-on-task in-classroom time (GDE Rapid Review, 2013). Although only measured at the mid-point in the project, there is evidence of strong and statistically significant progress toward achieving the project objectives. Department of Basic Education statistics in Table 1 shows that the 2014 target for Grade 3 Literacy has already been achieved and dramatic improvements have been recorded in Grade 3 Mathematics and Grade 6 Language.
Percentage of learners achieving at 50% or more on Annual National Assessment, Gauteng
2010/2011 2012 2013
Gr 3 Maths 21 48 69.6
Literacy 33 61.7 63.1
Gr 6 Maths 23 16 38.4
Language 29 52/39* 71/57
Sources: DBE Report on the Annual National Assessment, 2011 and 2012.
Note: * In 2012 the Language assessment in Grade 6 was split for Home Language and First Additional Language.
These statistics need to be interpreted with caution as the instruments may not have been strictly comparable and the 2011 and 2012/2013 tests were administered at different times of the year.
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| 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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Extensive emphasis was place don formative evaluation in the first year of the project. The external evaluators identified very serious weaknesses with some core components of the project including the (1) the first versions of the lesson plans and (2) the learner materials, particularly the materials that had been procured for Grade 1-3 African languages teaching. The baseline evaluation combined both qualitative and quantitative research techniques. The other component of external monitoring and evaluation was undertaken by the university-based advisor. The annual Rapid Reviews involved in-depth qualitative case studies in five schools per year on key elements of the initiative. After each rapid review reports were submitted, the project team engaged with the insights and made adjustments to the one or other components of the initiative.
Monthly monitoring of coaching activities was done via an extensive Management Information System and reports are analysed by the management team on a monthly basis. The GPLMS project management team also conduct frequent visits to NGOs to monitor activities. Reference groups have been established to provide stakeholders with the opportunity to input into project materials and activities.
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| 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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One of the major obstacles, identified in the base-line evaluation in 2011 was the poor quality of the African language graded readers that were purchased by the province. After extensive research, it became evident that the learner materials of the quality needed did not exist and had to be developed. The senior managers in the department recognized tht the development of these key learning resources would not only benefit the learners in the province, but would become a a national resource. As such, substantially funding was set aside, and one of the reading national literacy organization, Molteno Institute, building on a smaller pilot project successful developed the new learning resources in eight out of nine African languages.
One of the other major obstacles related to the rapid roll-out of the initiative. Although it would have been ideal to grow the initiative one grade at a time, the political timeframe would not permit this. As such, the initiative rollout out the model in the intermediate phase, Grade 4 to 6 in the second year of implementation. The management team recognized that given the substantial learning backlogs for learners in Grades 4-6, they would need to provide a system wide remediation strategy. This lead to the highly successful English First Additional Language Catch-Up Programme. The 11 week programme allowed all learners in the underperforming schools in the higher grades an opportunity to receive entry level instruction at an accelerated pace.
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