By Francis Kokutse. All Colleges of Education are to be upgraded to University Colleges and will offer a four-year Bachelor of Education degree with effect from the 2018-19 academic year, as part of efforts to improve the quality of teacher training in the country, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has announced. More...26 juin 2018
Meeting basic needs – A first step to student success
By Sharon Dell. While research shows that funded students have a better success rate because their basic needs are more likely to be met, they still need a range of other support mechanisms and structures to ensure they achieve their potential at South African universities. Student analytics – which provides a clearer picture of student needs – can help. More...
How well is South African science doing?
By Johann Mouton and Jaco Blanckenberg. When assessing the performance of any national science system one needs to be clear about the ‘performance criteria’ as well as the underlying data that are being used in such an assessment. More...
University-level upgrade for teacher-training colleges
By Francis Kokutse. All Colleges of Education are to be upgraded to University Colleges and will offer a four-year Bachelor of Education degree with effect from the 2018-19 academic year, as part of efforts to improve the quality of teacher training in the country, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has announced. More...21 juin 2018
University staff may strike over pay battle in court
A fresh round of university staff strikes loom in Kenya as unions plan to return to the courts over a pay increment row, with the Universities Academic Staff Union due to file a case at the Employment and Labour Relations Court demanding a fresh offer from the government, writes Augustine Oduor for the Sunday Standard. More...Universities must prepare needs-based budgets
Most Nigerian top-level managers, when they need to go for training, end up going to Harvard University or the London School of Economics, but training could be done in Nigeria – if a needs-based budget is adopted by universities, according to Professor Olufemi Bamiro, writes Modupe George for the Nigerian Tribune. More...South Africa wants to make history compulsory at school. But can it?
South Africa’s minister of Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga has released a report from a ministerial task team that recommends a major overhaul of the history curriculum at schools. Most of the debate around the report has focused on its main recommendation – to make history compulsory in the final three years of high school from 2023. More...
University writing groups provide an unexpected space for change
Such transformation conversations, especially in African contexts, almost always include contested debates on curriculum. Notably, scholars have highlighted how the problem is not only what universities teach – that is, the curriculum – but also the way they teach it. More...
A shock to the system: how new teachers in Zimbabwe learn to do their jobs
There’s a big difference between what prospective teachers learn at university and what they find when they enter the world of work. Some scholars have called this a “reality shock”, and pointed out that it could “account for the frustration, anxiety and self-doubt many early career teachers are thought to experience”. More...
Girls thrive with women teachers: a study in Francophone Africa
Over the past few decades most advanced countries have witnessed two striking reversals of the gender gap. First, teaching has become a profession dominated by women. This is particularly true at primary school level, where 84.5% of teachers across all countries classified as “developed” by UNESCO are women. More...
