By Bonny Norton. The benefits of learning, understanding and speaking in several languages are well-documented. But teaching children in Africa to read in their mother tongues as a springboard to literacy in other languages can be a fraught process. More...

By Elizabeth Walton. There is a line in South Africa’s Freedom Charter, which was drafted 60 years ago, that foreshadows the country’s current attitude to education. It declares:

The doors of learning and culture shall be open to all!

Twenty-one years into its life as a democracy, South Africa appears at first glance to have met the Freedom Charter’s challenge. Almost 97.5% of the country’s children aged between seven and 17 are attending primary or secondary schools. More...

By Sarah Pett. Dead white men rule the roost at South African and British universities. They preside over open spaces and lecture halls. They clog up reading lists and dominate the syllabus, particularly in subjects like philosophy and English literature.
Outside of the courses I have designed myself, only one person of colour – Naguib Mahfouz – has featured in my required teaching. Academics can suggest additional texts and offer optional modules but not all students will delve deeper in their own time or explore authors not included on the required reading list. More...

By Janet Condy. Five years ago, some 16 years since the end of apartheid rule in South Africa, I noticed that final year pre-service teachers in the faculty of education rarely mixed across racial lines. They avoided talking, integrating and working with each other. More...

By Sarah Fitchett. In England, one person dies every two hours as a result of suicide. And it is the leading cause of death for young people, both male and female, in the UK – every year around 1,600 children and young people aged ten to 34 take their own lives. More...

By Co-Pierre Georg. The minister allocated R17 billion over the next three years to fund higher education. This will ensure a fees freeze for students from families who earn less than R600 000 per year and includes a R9.2 billion increase to the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS). More...

By Steve Koch. The minister’s statements were well calculated, measured, and responsible in the current climate. The additional increase in National Student Aid Financial Scheme funds should go quite some way towards improving access to post-school education. More...

By Kevin Wheldall. Children who do not learn to read in the first few years of schooling are typically destined to a school career of educational failure, because reading underpins almost all subsequent learning. More...

By Dean Ashenden. For 50 years, Australia’s policymakers have been persuaded that growth at every level of the education system would be a good thing in itself – and would drive economic growth and social progress. More...

By Jared Cooney Horvath and Jason M Lodge. It’s a pattern many of us have likely experienced in the past.
You prep for an exam and all the information seems coherent and simple. Then you sit for an exam and suddenly all the information you learned is gone. You struggle to pull something up – anything – but the harder you fight, the further away the information feels. The dreaded mind blank. More...