SAMEA, in partnership with the Gauteng, Western Cape and Eastern Cape chapters, is proud to present its “The State of M&E Institutionalisation in Government” Seminar Series.

All SAMEA members and other interested parties are invited to participate in the seminar closest to their base.

The purpose of the seminar is three fold:

• Firstly to reflect on the state of M&E institutionalisation in South Africa as key documents reflect,

• Secondly to create an opportunity for the members to engage in critical conversation about these publications and the topic of institutionalization of M&E in South Africa,

• Thirdly to expose members to a list of key South African M&E publications (available in the public domain) that can guide their thinking about the institutionalisation of M&E in government and to provide members with a copy of these documents for their own use.

The Presenter

This seminar series will be presented by Prof. Gert van der Westhuizen from the University of Johannesburg on behalf of SAMEA. He is an associate professor and Head of Department of Educational Psychology at the university. He has a wide range of experience in the research evaluation and scholarly activity field. Prof van der Westhuizen is an experienced presenter, presenting a paper on the languages of evaluation, New Orleans in 2004, a paper on learning from evaluations, SAMEA, Johannesburg in 2007, another on a typology of higher education evaluation, AFREA Niger, West Africa in 2007 and a paper on evaluation of national education innovations, using activity theory, Conference on Learning, with prof. Ray Basson, 2007 to mention a few. His current research work includes Student learning in higher education – socio-semiotic analyses of conceptual learning in teacher education, Teacher knowledge development, Activity theory perspectives on programme evaluation and Evaluating evaluations in education.

The presentation is compiled by Prof van der Westhuizen, but will reflect the inputs from a SAMEA seminar reference group consisting of Indran Naidoo (PSC and SAMEA Board), Ronette Engela ( The Presidency), Fanie Cloete (University of Johannesburg and SAMEA Board), Marlene Roefs (M&E Specialist and SAMEA Board) and Mark Abrahams (University of Cape Town and SAMEA Board).

The publications that will be reviewed

SAMEA has selected various publications within the public domain that give an indication of where Monitoring and Evaluation is in South Africa. Since these documents are topical to the M&E community in South Africa, SAMEA is pleased to invite you to a presentation and discussion session on these documents.

The publications included in this presentation are:

• The Presidency: Government-wide Monitoring and Evaluation Policy Framework (November 2007) Part 1 and Part 2

• The Presidency: Development Indicators Mid-Term Review.

• National Treasury: Framework for Managing Programme Performance Information (May 2007)

• Public Service Commission: Basic Concepts in Monitoring and Evaluation (February 2008)

• Public Service Commission: Report on the Audit of Reporting Requirements and Departmental Monitoring and Evaluation Systems within National and Provincial Government (June 2007)