1. The Western Cape Education Department’s (WCED) guidelines on the issuing of circulars, minutes and notices were announced in Circular 0011/2012 dated 6 March 2012.

2. However, owing to recent changes in the structure of the WCED, it has become necessary to inform officials of the revised procedure for the issuing of circulars, minutes and notices.

3. The following important information, which applies with immediate effect, is brought to your attention:
3.1 Circulars may be signed only by the Head: Education or by the official acting in that position. A minute or notice may be signed only by the Deputy Director-General of the branch concerned or by the official acting in that position.
3.2 Circulars are issued to inform WCED schools and personnel of matters of particular importance, i.e. policy matters which cannot be arbitrarily amended or ignored. Minutes and notices are normally issued to provide information, instructions and clarity on routine matters.
3.3 The Head Office General Registry, located on the 6th floor of the Grand Central Towers Building, Cape Town, assigns numbers to official WCED circulars in numeric sequence and must be consulted in this regard.
3.4 The individual directorates and district offices assign numbers in numeric sequence to their particular minutes and notices and maintain registers for that purpose.

3.5 Only the Head Office General Registry is authorised to disseminate mass WCED electronic correspondence, such as the official WCED circulars, minutes and notices, to WCED officials and schools via the e-school and electronic mailing list systems. The circulars, minutes and notices are disseminated in PDF and therefore every effort must be made to ensure that the content is linguistically and grammatically correct, the correct letterheads are used and they are of a good quality. The WCED letterheads that were issued by the Directorate: Communication on 11 January 2012 are still applicable.
3.6 Any correspondence for electronic dissemination to our schools and officials must be authorised in writing by the relevant official at the rank of Head: Education or Deputy Director General or by the official acting in that position. That written authorisation must accompany the correspondence when it is presented to the General Registry for electronic dissemination.
3.7 Once a circular, minute or notice has been authorised, the date and name of the relevant official who authorised the correspondence must be reflected in the signature section of the electronic copy before the Registry is consulted. This means that the words "Signed by" and the date of authorisation must be indicated in the signature section. A good-quality copy of the original final document together with all relevant attachments, must be submitted together with the electronic copies (via e-mail or on a memory stick), to the Head of General Registry for electronic dissemination without delay.
3.8 It is the responsibility of the relevant official and directorate/component/unit who compiled the circular, minute or notice to ensure that its contents are correct and complete in all respects before the final approved signed and electronic copies are made available to the Registry for electronic dissemination. When the approved correspondence is forwarded to the Registry for dissemination, an official not lower than the rank of deputy director in the responsible directorate/component/unit must confirm to the Registry that the electronic copies are correct and complete and may be disseminated electronically. Under no circumstances will the Registry staff interfere with the electronic versions sent by directorates, which includes instances where the signature section is incomplete. No correspondence will be disseminated electronically without the required confirmation.

4. Should you have any enquiries about the content of this document, please contact the official whose name appears after "Enquiries" in the above letterhead.

5. Please regard Circulars 0006/2010 dated 19 February 2010 and 0011/2012 dated 06 March 2012, as amended accordingly.

6. Kindly bring the content of this circular to the attention of all personnel.


SIGNED: PA VINJEVOLD
HEAD: EDUCATION
DATE: 2014:05:27