The country's teacher unions are heading for a showdown with the Department of Basic Education over the Annual National Assessments.
Five teacher unions issued a joint statement on Monday reconfirming their support for a task team to develop a re-modeled, systemic and diagnostic tool instead of the ANA in its current form.
The unions said they were also mystified to hear that the Department had announced that the Annual National Assessments would be written early in December following earlier reports that the assessments had been pushed out to next year.
The unions said today slammed the Basic Education Department for misrepresenting the position of teacher unions on the matter, claiming further that the rescheduling of the ANA's was an attempt to relegate the five teacher unions as key stakeholders and drive them into oblivion.
Basil Manuel of the teacher's union Naptosa.
"The Unions are unequivocal in their stand that they will not be part of administrating the ANA on 1-4 December 2015 for the following reasons, they don't believe the ANA is serving the purpouse for which it was intended. The current ANA is compromised and not of standard." he said
On the 11th Minister Motshekga announced the postponement of the Annual National Assessments to February next year after the teacher unions threatened to boycott invigilation of the tests, originally set down for this week.
But, last week, Motshekga did an about-turn, saying that it was decided at a meeting of the Council of Education Ministers that “it would be in the best interests of the learners and administration if the annual national assessments were done this year.
Motshekga told reporters that all of the Council members, made up of the nine education MEC's, indicated they were all ready to administer the tests.
The department said while it had set up a task team to look at the re-modelling of the tests for future years, the 2015 ANA’s would not be postponed.
