Meg Pahad is a specialist in educational assessment and quality assurance. She worked at the Independent Examinations Board (IEB) from 1992 for eight years, setting up its assessor training division. In 1996 she completed an M. Ed at the University of Witwatersrand on The need for a new assessment paradigm in the context of the transformation of education and training in South Africa. In 1994 she wrote the prescribed assessment textbook for Wits University’s Further Diploma in Education, entitled Approaches to Assessment and Evaluation, and has several times since then been a visiting lecturer on assessment courses.
In 2000 Meg was contracted by the constituency of the Education, Training and Development Practices (ETDP) as a consultant in a small team to establish the ETDP Sectoral Education and Training Authority (SETA). She successfully established its quality assurance division and obtained SAQA accreditation for its ETQA.
From 2002-2005 Meg was contracted with EU funding to manage the Department of Labour (DoL)’s national assessor training project to support learnership implementation. She has worked as a consultant to a number of SETAs, evaluating and reviewing quality assurance systems. She has conducted research, and monitoring and evaluation, and written and edited documents for a range of CBOs, public sector initiatives, private sector companies, as well as the Departments of Education and Labour.
Meg was appointed to three ministerial committees: the Ministerial Committee for Development Work on the National Qualifications Framework (1995-96), the Ministerial Committee to Investigate the Senior Certificate Examination (1998) and the Ministerial Committee to Investigate and advise on a single examination system for NQF levels 1-4 (2002). She chaired the Department of Education Task Team to investigate the establishment of an ETQA for General and Further Education and Training (1999) (now Umalusi).
Meg was (2006-10) a member of the DoL NQF Task Team and was contracted by GTZ to support the development of draft policies, regulations, criteria and guidelines and implementation systems for the Quality Council for Trades and Occupations. Her focus was assessment.
In 2011 she reviewed and updated the assessment, moderation and verification policies of the ETDP SETA. She was also contracted in 2011 by the Western Indian Ocean Certification of Marine Protected Area Professionals (WIO-COMPAS) to review their assessment policies, instruments, tools and framework. In 2012 she conducted assessor training with WIO-COMPAS and was appointed as their external moderator for the assessment of their post-graduate level professionals. From 2015- 2019 she worked part-time and retired in 2019. Now she focuses on her NPO work.
Meg is on the Board of Project Literacy where she serves as the Chairperson and also serves on the IEB Board, both Non-Profit Organisations. She is a member of the Technical Assistance Unit panel of professional service providers of the National Treasury. She was managing editor of The Thinker magazine until 2020.
