education - The African Mirror

Mar

2024

Ghana’s free high school policy is getting more girls to complete secondary education – study

EDUCATION drives economic growth and individual well-being. Secondary education, in particular, plays a crucial role. In recent decades, this recognition has encouraged several African countries to make secondary education free. One example is Ghana’s Free Public Senior High School (FreeSHS) policy, initiated in 2017. The policy aimed to remove cost barriers to secondary education, including fees, textbooks, boarding and meals. As scholars of public policy, we conducted research into the impact of the policy, particularly its effect on the number of girls completing secondary school. We emphasised the educational outcomes of girls because they are at a disadvantage when accessing…

Feb

2024

By The African Mirror

University rankings are unscientific and bad for education: experts point out the flaws

EDUCATION

WE rank almost everything. The top 10 restaurants in our vicinity, the best cities to visit, the best movies to watch. To understand whether the rankings were any good you’d want to know who was doing the ranking. And what it was they were looking for. These are exactly the same questions that are worth asking when looking at the international ranking of universities. SHARON FONN, Professor, School of Public Health, University of Gothenburg Sweden, University of the Witwatersrand Ranking universities started a couple of decades ago. Since then they have become omnipresent, presuming importance and validity. Institutions, especially those…

Jan

2024

By The African Mirror

Education has a huge role to play in peace and development: 5 essential reads

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

NELSON Mandela was a famous advocate for the value of education. In 1990, the man who would become South Africa’s first democratic president four years later told a high school in Boston: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” NATASHA JOSEPH, Commissioning Editor, The Conversation The United Nations agrees. In 2018 its General Assembly adopted a resolution that proclaimed 24 January as the International Day of Education. It’s an annual opportunity to shine a spotlight on the role that education can and should play in promoting peace and development. This year the theme…

Jan

2024

By The African Mirror

Should Kenya abolish all school exams? Expert sets out five reasons why they’re still useful

EDUCATION

THE role of examinations in Kenyan schools is under scrutiny. This is because there is a lot that is wrong with the country’s examinations, a situation that threatens to derail education gains made over the decades. For instance, for two consecutive years – last year and the year before – the periods during the country’s national examination period were marred by allegations of leaked tests. These allegations are linked to cartels which make money from parents and learners. BEATRICE M’MBOGA AKALA, Lecturer, University of the Witwatersrand There were also reports this year of high school students receiving contradicting results from…

Nov

2023

By The African Mirror

South Africa’s literacy crisis: our app could help young readers by using home language and English

EDUCATION

LAURETTE MARAIS, Senior Researcher, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research LAURETTE PRETORIUS, Professor Extraordinarius, Stellenbosch University LITERACY changes lives: in Unesco’s words, it “empowers and liberates people, … reduces poverty, increases participation in the labour market and has positive effects on health and sustainable development”. But in South Africa, 8 out of 10 children cannot read for meaning by the end of their third school year. During the first three years of their education, South African children receive schooling in one of the 11 written official languages. Generally, this means being taught in their home language. Then, at the beginning…

Oct

2023

By The African Mirror

HIV-positive parents in Zimbabwe struggle to manage their children’s education – study shows how

HEALTH

OVER the past three decades, researchers have explored various aspects of the impact of the HIV pandemic. One focus area has been children who have lost their parents to AIDS. Less attention has been given to children who are raised by parents living with HIV. This group has become much bigger as more people have access to antiretroviral therapy and are therefore expected to raise their children. TATENDA ZINYEMBA, Researcher of Economics, Health, and Governance, United Nations University Our research in Zimbabwe looked at the effects the HIV status of parents had on their children’s education. In Zimbabwe, the current…

Oct

2023

By MISHECK KHUMBILO NYIRONGO, BIRD STORY AGENCY

Innovative radio programming transforms agriculture, enables education and offers a lifeline in eastern Zambia

NEWS

FOR Bauti Chipeta, working the land among the rolling hills and lush fields of the Lundazi District in the heart of eastern Zambia, life had begun to feel like an endless struggle. With fertilisers increasingly expensive and the land more and more denuded, cash crops brought in less and less each year and the cutting down of local forests had led to erratic rainfall. Then Chipeta discovered a local community radio station, Chikaya. “I started listening to community radio in 2018 when they also introduced us to permaculture and agroecology approaches on how to grow local seeds,” Chipeta recalled. The…

Oct

2023

By AMY WEST, BIRD STORY AGENCY

Writing In The Sand: This young woman’s early memories of her grandmother kept her dreams of an education alive

LITERATURE

WHEN Tholoana was four, her grandmother taught her to write her name using a stick to carve out the letters in the sand outside her home, a one-bedroom brick house in a small, peri-urban area outside of Maseru, Lesotho. “She didn’t have much of an education, but she taught me letters by the shapes they formed: downward wash basins, chairs, standing tree, and eggs. This is how my name took form,” said Tholoana, recalling those early years, and speaking now at the Cape University of Technology (CPUT) in Cape Town. “I come from the dusty ground, like a true warrior,”…

Oct

2023

By The African Mirror

History teaching in South Africa could be vastly improved – if language skills were added to the mix

EDUCATION

IN recent years there’s been growing recognition among education experts that integrating content and language learning is key to promoting comprehensive academic achievement. This is particularly relevant in multilingual education systems where English serves as the primary medium of instruction. NHLANHLA MPOFU, Chair- Curriculum Studies, Stellenbosch University So, in 2013, South Africa’s Department of Basic Education, which is responsible for primary and secondary education, set out to enhance academic performance through a strategy called English Across the Curriculum. This approach involves integrating language skills in content subjects such as history. Language skills include listening and speaking; reading and viewing; writing…

Jun

2023

By The African Mirror

Kenya’s budget doesn’t allocate funds for new education initiatives – this will stall innovation in the country

EDUCATION

PRESIDENT William Ruto’s first budget for Kenya sets no education priorities. The Finance Bill 2023 doesn’t make it clear what Kenya is trying to achieve – stronger foundational learning, technical and vocational skills, or innovation. Author MOSES NGWARE, Senior Research Scientist, African Population and Health Research Center This is despite the importance placed on deepening technical capacity to drive economic growth, and education reforms spelt out in the official policy. This also comes against the backdrop of a political campaign promise to “bridge current teacher shortage gap of 116,000 within two financial years”. The allocation to education in the 2023/24…