South Africa: Jonathan Jansen's Worth the Fight - - Fixing Failure in SA Schools

What the report says

Daily Maverick, via AllAfrica, reports on a new book by South African education scholar Jonathan Jansen that grows out of his work with a school principal on the Cape Flats to improve results at a school that recorded the Western Cape’s lowest pass rate in the 2023 National Senior Certificate exams. The article says the project began as an effort to help turn the school around, but it developed into a broader reflection on why classroom change is so difficult in South Africa.

According to the report, Jansen concluded that some of his long-held ideas about teaching, learning and the leadership of working-class schools needed to be reconsidered. That experience became the basis for the book, which is framed as both a practical account of school improvement and a critique of assumptions that shape education policy and teacher training.

The story says Jansen’s findings also have wider implications for public universities that prepare teachers. In the article’s view, educators who have been away from the classroom may be reinforcing the inequalities and poor performance seen in many South African schools. The piece adds that the project helped prompt further research and influenced some colleagues to rethink how future teachers are trained. More broadly, the report places Jansen’s work in the context of ongoing efforts to improve school performance and reduce persistent gaps in South African education.