The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) has introduced a range of electronic communication services to improve communication with internal and external audiences.

The department launched a new web site, WCED Online, the latest service, on Friday, 5 October, 2001, in time for the start of the fourth term this year.

"Electronic communication has opened a window to whole, new world in education," said the Western Cape’s Minister of Education, Helen Zille.

"The WCED is doing its utmost to harness this powerful medium to improve education in the province.

"The most exciting feature of electronic communication is the potential it offers for delivering curriculum to our most disadvantaged schools."

WCED Online is designed primarily with end users in mind, in line with best practice for education web sites internationally. The target audiences are learners, parents, educators, administrators and partners in education.

The site is designed to make it as easy as possible to change important opening pages to match usage patterns and end user requirements. The opening pages provide customised links for target groups; "quick links" to the most popular destinations; and a feedback facility.

Other opening pages include links to current projects, news, information on "who does what", and an A-Z index. The WCED web team has sought to keep the design as simple as possible, to facilitate easy access to relevant information and services.

Special features of the content include all outcomes and assessment standards for every grade and subject proposed in the Draft Revised National Curriculum Statement released by the national Department of Education on 30 July this year.

Ms Zille asked the WCED’s web team to include the outcomes and assessment standards to draw attention to the importance of benchmarks in education – "we cannot improve the quality of education unless we have clear benchmarks against which we can measure progress," she said.

"While the content of the statement is still in a draft form, the outcomes and assessment standards are definitely a step in the right direction. They flag the importance of setting clear guidelines on standards we must achieve in education.

"It is essential that we align everything we do, from teacher training to curriculum development and delivery, learner assessment and school performance evaluation, to clear, well-understood benchmarks. Only then can we improve the quality of education."

Ms Zille urged educators, parents and all those interested in education to study the outcomes and assessment standards so that all can understand what is expected of learners and teachers in each grade and learning area.

Meanwhile, she added that WCED would always be work in progress. "As a learning organisation, we will listen to our end users and will develop the site continuously to meet their requirements."

The launch version of WCED Online runs to 554 individual pages, with 5 274 navigation links, 1 934 graphic links, and 130 links to external sites. The web address is http://wced.wcape.gov.za.

Meanwhile, work on web and related information technology projects by WCED departments and the province’s School’s IT Unit converged significantly during the third quarter of 2001. These projects include:

• An extensive site being developed by the WCED’s Curriculum Development Directorate, focusing on curriculum development and support. The directorate plans to use the site as a "virtual workspace" for everyone involved in curriculum development and support, in line with its concept of "web centrality".

• Pilot programmes of the WCED’s Khanya Technology in Education project opened for business in selected schools. Khanya is investigating innovative ways of using information and communication technologies (ICT) to deliver curriculum, particularly in disadvantaged schools.

• A new electronic mailing list system now provides closed mailing lists for distributing information en masse, automatically, via email; and open and closed mailing lists that can be used by online discussion groups.

• New facilities are now available for distributing circulars in electronic formats to schools.

• A new "e-postmaster" system is ready for implementation that will make it easier for email correspondents to deal directly with staff in departments responsible for particular functions.

• For the first time this year, schools were able to submit answers via the web for annual school surveys. The system collated the replies automatically.

• For the third year running, matriculation examination results will be published on the web this year. WCED Online will provide the necessary links to the matric site, which also includes a searchable matric timetable.

• The WCED’s Education Management Information System division (EMIS), is developing a site that will enable users to search for a wide range of data sets via the web, directly from WCED databases. EMIS has already developed a web-based facility for searching for details on different kinds of schools.

• The department’s Telecommunications Project is making significant progress towards its objective of supplying a telecommunications link to every school in the province.

"We are moving rapidly towards a whole new era in electronic communication in the province," Ms Zille said. "We plan to make full use of these systems as we prepare for the new year in 2002."