The 2011 Invitation to Submit Learner and Teacher Support Material (LTSM) for Evaluation and Adoption in National Catalogue of the Department of Basic Education (DBE), initiates the evaluation and adoption of LTSM in select subject categories for use in South African public schools. This document, including all attachments, provides an overview of the process for submission, evaluation, and adoption of LTSM. By submitting LTSM for evaluation, publishers and producers agree to follow the procedures set forth in this document. Failure to comply with all procedures, including stated deadlines, will result in disqualification for the evaluation and adoption process.
The national catalogue will be used by all provincial education departments and schools (with function to procure LTSM in terms of section 21 of the South African schools Act) to procure LTSM. The National Catalogue will provide a listing all Core LTSM approved for use in South African public schools, following a national screening process. It will provide up to eight options per subject and grade from which schools can select the most appropriate material, given their particular context.
The 2011 evaluation will include the Core LTSM categories listed under Heading 3. On all submissions publishers must designate each specific category for which a submission is to be evaluated.
Publishing companies are limited to submitting no more than four titles per category for each language. A publishing company is deemed to be a registered legal entity and not a publishing imprint.
Graded reading schemes are considered as one submission.
Material for Grades 1 to 3 must cover all three grades in a particular language; material will not be accepted for only one of these grades.
All textbooks, workbooks or learner books must have accompanying Teacher Guides.
Teacher Guides may be submitted in English only, regardless of the language of learner material. However the publisher will be obligated to make the Teacher Guide available in the language of the learner material should it be selected for the National Catalogue.
Publishers are responsible for determining the language and category of submission. See Heading 3 for categories of submission.
It is the responsibility of the publisher to ensure that each submission is complete and sample material is delivered to the designated site.
All submissions should be anonymous: author names, publisher imprint and publisher details should not appear on the material for evaluation. However full title and ISBN should be included. Where the publisher's name is part of the title an abbreviated title can be used.
Each submission must contain an identification sheet including: category of submission, publishers details, contact person (including email address), ISBN, full title, title used on submission (where this is not the full title), names of all authors, and number of copies. See Annexure A for sample identification sheet.
Only print material will be evaluated.
Each submission should be packaged in a separate container. Cardboard boxes are preferred and should not exceed 10kg. Where a submission for one category exceeds 10kg, multiple containers should be used, indicating on the identification sheet how many containers comprise the submission (see Annexure A). The category of submission must be clearly indicated on the exterior of each container, in addition to an identification sheet being included inside the container.
FP-1 Grades 1, 2 and 3, Home Language: Graded Reader Series 5 Readers per Reading Grade.
FP-5 Grades 1, 2 and 3, First Additional Language: Graded Reader Series 5 Readers per Reading Grade.
Note: Submissions must strictly comply with the above categories and will only be accepted for the full category.. For example: a workbook without a teacher's guide will be deemed to be an incomplete submission, workbooks for grades 1 and 2 but not grade 3 will constitute an incomplete submission.
Submissions will not be accepted before 9am on 13 June 2011 and after 5pm on 17 June 2011. An outline of the submission process schedule is attached (see Annexure B).
A submission fee of R2 000 will be payable for each submission per category for each grade. Therefore should a submission cover 3 grades, this amounts to R6 000.
SCREENING PROCESS The screening will comprise of two phases.
Phase one will be a filtering process to determine the shortlist of titles, the primary instrument will be a checklist based on the relevant national curriculum document. In essence this will amount to checking if material is aligned to the curriculum.
Phase two will comprise of a rating exercise, requiring specialist expertise in three phases. One part will require screener to evaluate the usability of material in different context. Another will require screeners to evaluate the accuracy and currency of the content. Specialist language expertise would also be incorporated at this stage. The three parties would then come together for a facilitated meeting, resulting in a report which makes a recommendation on the material.
Both phases of the screening will be on a 'blind' basis, i.e. author and publisher details are removed from the submission.
As one measure to manage the conflict between volume of submissions and the need for a rigorous process, a systematic reading will be applied. This will amount to an overview of the text to check for progression and conceptual scaffolding, followed by an indepth review of a randomly selected topic to assess the pedagogic merit. The former will result in a rating sheet while the later will result in a narrative assessment substantiating the final recommendation. Together these two will constitute the final report, which will be made available to publishers.
A maximum of the eight top rated titles will be considered for final confirmation in the National Catalogue. Where fewer than eight titles are considered of appropriate quality, the number for final confirmation will be less than eight.
Categories of evaluation will be limited to: accepted, conditionally accepted (for text that are rated in the top eight, but need editorial improvement only, such as proofreading), and not accepted.
Appeals will be limited to instances where an error has occurred in the review process. For example, a topic is mistakenly claimed to be omitted from a text or a factual error is reported when there is current scientific evidence to support it.
To manage any potential conflict of interest and limit undue influence each screening committee member will be required to sign an affidavit declaring that they have no vested interest in LTSM development; be it as an author or beneficiary from a publishing company. Furthermore, it will include an undertaking to report approaches by LTSM developers, be it companies or authors, during the review process.
Any publishing company or author found to be seeking to influence the evaluation process will be reported to the National Treasury and could, in terms of National Treasury's processes, be barred from doing business with government in future.
All queries related to this document and the process outlined herein should be submitted via the email address: Grade12310LTSM@dbe.gov.
Category of submission:.
Publisher's imprint for this submission:.
Publisher's legal registration:.
Contact person (Name and email address):.
Full title for material in this container:.
Title used on submission (where this is not the full title):.
ISBN's for material in this container:.
Full names of all authors:.
Number of copies in this container:.
Container of for submission number ...... for category............