94 Through the Dinaledi Schools Programme, the Department of Basic Education has identified 500 schools country-wide that have excelled in Mathematics and Science. The aim of this programme is to increase the number of learners in Mathematics and Science in Grade 12, improve success rates through the provision of learner and educator support material, as well as to encourage successful matriculates to enrol for technical disciplines such as engineering at institutions of higher learning. The Integrated Strategic Planning Framework for Teacher Development in South Africa was launched in 2011. This strategic framework is a collaborative effort of the DBE, the DHET, teacher unions, the Education Labour Relations Council (ELRC), the South African Council for Educators, the Education, Training and Development Practices Sector Education and Training Authority (ETDPSETA) and the Higher Education South African Education Deans’ Forum (HESAEDF). The Framework outlines a 15-year roll-out of improved and expanded teacher education and development opportunities with the aim of improving the quality of teaching and learning in schools. It is envisaged that the Plan will respond to the following challenges: educators’ poor subject knowledge and pedagogic content knowledge, inadequate and weak system to accurately identify systemic and individual educator development needs, insufficient numbers of educators to meet system requirements, lack of support to educators at the local level and education system capacity constraints. Further concerns in relation to education included the quality of education programmes, poor coordination and lack of coherence in the teacher education and development system. The National Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS) were introduced in September 2011 to strengthen the national curriculum statements with a view to improving the quality of teaching and learning in schools. One hundred and fifty thousand (150,000) educators and 2051 subject advisers have been capacitated on the implementation of CAPS. The 2012 roll-out of CAPS was Grades 1-3 and 10 and Grades 4-6 will be covered in 2013. In terms of the National Senior Certificate (NSC) results, there has been a significant improvement and performance increase was at 73.9% which indicated 3.7% increase from 2011 results (70.2%) and in 2010 it was 67.8%. A process of standardizing NCS results in line with international standards was undertaken. An international evaluation on selected subjects was undertaken with reputable institutions such as Cambridge international examination, Scots Qualification authority and Board of studies in New Wales. The process was also meant to set benchmark with Higher Education sector in SA. The Umalusi convened its own standardization on the performance of subjects to ensure consistency of performance with the previous years and out of the 58 subjects 41 were accepted, 12 were taken down and 5 were adjusted. Other interventions have been introduced to deal specifically with the measurement of learner performance. The other is the Annual National Assessments procedure that was instituted in Grades 1-3 to help monitor learner performance in literacy and numeracy. Approximately six million learners in 19,000 schools underwent assessments for Grades 1-6 and Grade 9 in 2011/201274. In addition, government has established the institution of the National Education Evaluation 74 The Presidency (2012): ‘Annual Report 2011/2012’, the presidency, Pretoria. 94