There are other things that we do not yet know enough about. In these areas we require investment into long-term demonstration-based research, focused on curriculum and pedagogy as it relates to the specific cognitive, social and linguistic capabilities of poor and working-class children.

The work of the NMI provides us with a set of ideas and understandings about education that allows us to move beyond frustration to a careful, step-by-step reconstruction of the humanity, knowledge base, pedagogy, and structure that must be brought together to establish “solid ground” under our future system of education.

There are some things we can do immediately, at scale, to recreate the conditions of basic education. These things require resources and leadership.

One of the core “problems behind the problems” is a misunderstanding and underestimation of the relationship between cognitive development and our children’s linguistic abilities. 

We are not failing in education because we are collectively useless. We are failing because the current system of education is not creating the conditions to “win”. This knowledge is liberating.

The sense of failure across rural classrooms has translated into a war of frustration, between and within educators, learners, parents and policy makers.

People are starting to blame teachers, learners and parents of the rural poor.

A young child in Mqanduli absorbs the myths of apartheid’s architects. She watches her brothers and sisters fail in education and thinks, “Perhaps there is something wrong with us”. 

This is the elephant in the room. The education system is not working for poor black children – the majority of children in our nation.  The results are inequitable and painful. 

The few learners who do gain entrance to tertiary study largely struggle to read and write at an undergraduate level.  After five years, 56% of students in three-year degrees had left without graduating. 

Approximately 7% of all children who entered schooling in 1991 achieved matriculation results that would have allowed them to follow further tertiary training. Less than 1% of rural and urban working-class and poor learners was able to achieve this central social dream. 

The vast majority of South African children struggle with basic literacy and numeracy. Grade 3 assessment scores suggest that the South African education system is producing some of the lowest literacy and numeracy scores across the world.