ABSTRACT
South African education has witnessed different attempts to engage with quality and one of the most recent policy attempts is the National Department of Education’s Action Plan 2014. It is an attempt to respond to some of the challenges in South African Education and, it can be viewed as part of the policy mapping and restructuring of the Zuma presidency that witnessed changes in the Education Ministry. The chapter argues that there is a need to ensure that student learning includes other education aims such as citizenship, tolerance, and respect – aspects which are ignored in current global education and development discourses. It reviews the literature and presents conceptualisation of quality. The chapter provides an overview of South African policy activity in the post-apartheid period. It aims to place the plan in an historical context and to identify the major approaches to education quality in South Africa.
