The Whole School Evaluation (WSE) is a quality assurance initiative undertaken by the DoE which aims to evaluate the quality of education offered by individual schools. WSE raises the level of accountability throughout the education system and allows national, provincial and district officials to identify strengths and areas where improvement is needed. It serves as a feedback and reporting mechanism for a wide variety of stakeholders in education provisioning and delivery across South Africa. It seeks to promote development and improvement in all aspects of schools, through district, provincial and national planning and a prioritisation of needs.

A number of instruments are used to collect and record information from a variety of sources. Evaluations take the form of self-assessment by the schools as well as external review by supervisory units. In order to ensure that WSE yields meaningful information, the DoE has engaged Khulisa to evaluate and refine the instruments used to conduct the evaluations and build the capacity of school officials to carry out self-assessments.

Khulisa is in the process of refining seven of the nine areas of the Whole School Evaluation instrument. Once it has completed this process, Khulisa will develop a manual to train supervisors in the external evaluation process and conduct a pre-pilot test in four schools. With feedback from these surveys, Khulisa will ensure that the instrument is comprehensive and appropriate, and then conduct a full survey with the instrument. These results will be used by the DoE to support improvement planning in South African schools. Using a participatory approach -- created by feedback workshops, pre-pilot surveys and consultations with the DoE -- improved practices and knowledge-sharing will be promoted throughout the whole process of the program.