Consolidating the General Education Certificate in South Africa

3. Policy issue 2. Using the General Education Certificate (GEC) to promote 21st Century Skills

Policy issue 2. Using the General Education Certificate (GEC) to promote 21st Century Skills

Option 1: Reconsider the assessment of 21st Century Skills.

Option 2: Leverage the champions to support national implementation.

Like South Africa, many education systems in recent decades have sought to shift the emphasis of teaching and learning away from memorisation of content towards the integration of knowledge and skills. Globally, this shift has been challenging and lengthy, generating considerable debate around how intended curricula and pedagogical changes can reach the classroom (OECD, 2020[56]). Assessment can play an important role in encouraging adoption of new learning goals by explicitly setting the goalposts that teachers and learners invest their time and energy towards achieving (OECD, 2013[33]). By assessing the skills in South Africa’s new competency framework and seeking to encourage project-based and inquiry‑based learning, the GEC has the potential to play a central role in supporting the country’s curriculum and assessment reform.

3.1. The GEC’s Integrated Project is an innovative approach to fostering and recognising 21st Century Skills

The GEC introduces a new assessment – the Integrated Project. Previously, as part of SBA, all subjects already used projects in Term 3 however, the integration of different subjects within a project is new. The Integrated Project seeks to enable project-based learning by requiring learners to draw on, and practise, a range of skills and knowledge across multiple subjects to solve problems or ‘scenarios’ around which the Integrated Project is organised. Examples of such projects include developing a business plan and presenting it to a group of investors and building a sensor-triggered door alarm. Learners complete two projects that span their nine subjects in Grade 9 in Term 3. The Life Orientation project covers: Life Orientation; Home and First Additional Languages; Creative Arts; Social Sciences; and Economic and Management Sciences. The Mathematics, Science and Technology project covers: Mathematics; Technology; and Natural Sciences.

3.1.1. Projects can enable the assessment of a wide range of skills and knowledge, and support learner motivation

The use of projects for high-stakes assessment is quite common internationally. An OECD mapping of certificates at the end of upper secondary education in 2025 found that around half of certificates – 32 out of 71 certificates use projects or portfolios (OECD, 2026[36]). One reason projects are frequently used for assessments is that they typically require the interplay of varied knowledge and cognitive processes which enables them to assess complex or higher order skills in the revised Bloom’s taxonomy like analysis, evaluation, and creation (Anderson, 2001[57]). When well-designed, research suggests that projects can promote higher levels of achievement by developing the social-emotional competencies that contribute to general academic performance (Gill, 2016[58]).

Research about the value of project assessments is echoed by interviews and workshops the OECD team held with teachers piloting the Integrated Project in South Africa. Teachers noted that the project enables learners to contribute different skills and knowledge, and practise collaboration. The integrated nature is also perceived to provide value by reinforcing learning, as learners address the same topic from different angles across subjects. Internationally, projects are suggested to motivate learners because they can provide choice and opportunities for personalisation (OECD, 2026[36]). South African learners the OECD team met with reported enjoying the project because it enabled them to tackle different activities and work directly with peers. Teachers noted that the project can be particularly valuable for learners who struggle with traditional academic learning, providing a setting for their skills to be recognised and boosting confidence.

“I wouldn’t have the organisational skills I have now if it weren’t for the GEC.”

“Before, I didn’t know I had these problem-solving skills.”

Quotes from OECD learner focus groups in South Africa.

3.1.2. The Integrated Project uses central prescription and scaffolding to promote reliability

Projects are a non-standardised form of assessment. While learners may be given a central, common task, there is rarely a single correct answer. Instead, learners are expected to use inquiry-, project- and problem‑based learning methodologies to identify the problem, develop ideas, conduct their own research and use their findings to develop creative and authentic solutions (English and Kitsantas, 2013[59]). The lack of standardisation can make it difficult for assessment results from projects to be seen as reliable and consistent. In South Africa, the Integrated Project seeks to address some of these challenges through a high degree of scaffolding and central prescription. For example, scenarios or problems that learners are required to solve are specified nationally. Within the overall scenario, the individual activities and classroom tasks for learners are also provided centrally, creating a largely uniform step by step process. These central tools and guidance lead to the development of a consistent set of learner outputs and support the reliability of projects and their assessment.

3.1.3. Assessing 21st Century Skills as part of the project is highly challenging

As part of the Integrated Project, teachers in South Africa are expected to assess learners’ 21st Century Skills: critical thinking, creativity, communication, collaboration and metacognition. The rubrics and guidance for the Project provide teachers with illustrations of when learners are likely to exhibit specific 21st Century Skills. Teachers are expected to note how frequently they view different skills demonstrated by each learner, and those frequencies are then used to provide learners with an overall assessment of their 21st Century Skills, which is recorded as a mark out of ten.

3.1.4. Valid and reliable assessments of 21st Century Skills are highly challenging

Globally, many systems like South Africa have progressively integrated a broader range of skills and knowledge into their curricula in recent years (OECD, 2021[60]). Across systems, the new skills and knowledge which have been integrated are referred to variously as social and emotional skills, transversal skills, or, as in South Africa, 21st Century Skills. While these terms vary, they tend to refer to a similar set of qualities, attributes and characteristics that are distinct from the skills typically already present in most curricula, such as literacy and numeracy, or job and occupation related skills (OECD, 2023[61]). The OECD’s Survey on Social and Emotional Skills defines social and emotional skills as individual characteristics that are: expressed in repeatable patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviours; manifested in maximal behaviour more than typical behaviour (and therefore distinct from personality traits); dependent on situational factors (e.g. task context, fatigue); subject to developmental change and genetic predispositions; teachable / responsive to intervention; and are predictive of key life outcomes (Steponavičius, Gress-Wright and Linzarini, 2023[62]).

Assessing social and emotional, or 21st Century Skills in any context, and in a high-stakes context in particular, is associated with many challenges. Social and emotional skills are demonstrated and manifest in different ways for different individuals (OECD, 2024[63]). Variability in how social and emotional skills are demonstrated at different times and contexts makes their assessment in a high-stakes context particularly challenging. Data from South Africa also shows that implementing the 21st Century Skills assessment has not been easy. Across the GEC pilot schools in 2024, nearly three quarters (1 088 out of 1 462) of submissions for the assessment of 21st Century Skills were incomplete. In contrast, this was the case for less than 2% of Integrated Project grades. In addition to the general challenges associated with assessing social and emotional skills, class sizes in South Africa are high (77 learners per class on average according to TALIS 2024). In such a context, it is not possible for an individual teacher to observe all learners equally, with a strong possibility that fleeting moments of 21st Century Skills being demonstrated are missed.

Furthermore, 21st Century Skills are not necessarily always visible. Metacognition for example, which is the awareness and understanding of our own thought processes is inherently internal and may not provide any external cues or behaviours that a teacher could observe. As South Africa prepares to implement the GEC across the country, the current assessment of 21st Century Skills might be reconsidered. Approaches could focus on promoting the recognition and development of 21st Century Skills rather than a direct assessment, which is highly challenging in a high‑stakes context.

3.2. Policy option 1. Reconsider the assessment of 21st Century Skills

Including 21st Century Skills in the GEC signals to learners, schools and parents that these skills are integral to schooling in South Africa. As well as creating space in the classroom for skills development, including 21st Century Skills in the GEC communicates their role for young people’s lives after school. The implicit messaging around 21st Century Skills that is encouraged by including them in the GEC is particularly valuable for countries like South Africa that are seeking to broaden teaching and learning beyond the academic focus that has traditionally predominated. Yet given the difficulties of assessing 21st Century Skills for high-stakes purposes, South Africa might reconsider the current approach for their assessment as part of the GEC. Instead, the GEC could focus on developing learners’ awareness of their 21st Century Skills and even include learner self-evaluation of these skills to recognise and promote their development.

3.2.1. Make explicit links to 21st Century Skills during teaching and learning of the Integrated Project

Existing teacher guidance when implementing the Integrated Project could be further developed to support teachers to lead a discussion with learners to build their awareness of 21st Century Skills and provide the basis for metacognition around their own behaviours. For example, guidance might support teachers to engage in short conversations with learners before beginning project activities about the 21st Century Skills that will be important for the activity’s successful execution. The discussion might also include explicit examples of what effective demonstration of specific skills might look like, examples of contexts where they might be useful during the activity and why those skills are important. At the end of the class, teachers might be supported to undertake short reflective exercises with learners about if, and when, they did demonstrate 21st Century Skills and to share examples with each other. These kinds of activities would support learners’ awareness, development and fluency around 21st Century Skills without putting pressure on teachers to directly assess them.

3.2.2. Consider using learner self-evaluation of 21st Century Skills

Several education systems use learner self-evaluation to promote and recognise broader social and emotional skills. Given the challenges of assessing social and emotional skills in valid and reliable ways in the context of high-stakes assessments, self-evaluations can provide a valuable approach for both assessing and promoting such skills (OECD, 2023[61]). Through guided self-evaluation, learners can be supported to develop greater awareness of how different social and emotional skills can manifest and when they themselves exhibit such skills. With appropriate scaffolding, learners can also be helped to understand steps and strategies to strengthen skills and set personal objectives for the development of their skills. For example, in British Columbia (Canada), learners must complete a self-assessment against the system’s Core Competencies as a part of their capstone project, which are both graduation requirements for the B.C. Certificate of Graduation (Dogwood Diploma). All learners complete a self-evaluation on their Core Competency development twice a year from Kindergarten to Grade 12 (British Columbia Ministry of Education, n.d.[64]).

3.3. Policy option 2. Leverage the champions to support national implementation

As South Africa moves from piloting to full implementation of the GEC, all schools must be supported to embrace its vision. In particular, the GEC requires a major shift in the way schools and teachers approach learning and assessment, with a greater focus on project-based learning and students developing and demonstrating a wider range of skills. To support roll-out and capitalise on insights developed by pilot schools, South Africa could consider the following actions:

• Peer learning: Facilitate school clusters for mutual support, with some schools and teachers identified as “change champions”.

• Capability development: Provide sustained training so new adopters can learn from experienced schools.

• Communication: Clearly communicate the GEC's purpose to schools, learners and families, using pilot participants' voices to explain changes. South Africa could also finalise and release the GEC Concept Document and targeted communication materials. In Poland, for example, when maths was made a compulsory subject of the Matura, television advertisements were used to communicate this change to learners and their families to prepare them for the change (OECD, 2024[65]).

• Leadership: Encourage Senior Management Teams to take direct ownership of GEC delivery. The DBE might create specific events and materials to set out the role and expectations of the Senior Management Teams in each school as the GEC is implemented nationally.

• Alignment: Ensure co‑ordination between the GEC, the new Competency Framework, and Curriculum Strengthening work. Signal early what GEC aspects may need revision as curriculum reform advances.