About

The Nelson Mandela Institute was founded in 2007 with the understanding that South African society and the economy cannot grow without the creativity, skill and capacity of its people: The future of any country depends on the quality of its public education system.

In South Africa, however, the system of public education fails to serve the majority of young people adequately, plagued as it is by inequalities and disparities between rural and urban schools.

Many of these young children leave school still not able to read and write with confidence and very few go on to pursue higher education. According to research, only 4% of black African children entering grade one will successfully make it through to higher education.

Children in rural areas are often linguistically marginalised and come from socially burdened areas. Current models of teacher training and school development do not work because they are not tailored to the cognitive, social and linguistic abilities of rural children.

Mr Mandela has long recognised that the strength of democracy depends on the quality of public education and has been concerned with the standard of rural education in the country for many years.

During the 1990s he became involved in the upgrading of infrastructure in rural schools across South Africa, in partnership with representatives from the private sector. Over 100 000 school children benefited through these initiatives.

Despite these significant gains, Mr Mandela realised that the challenge of learning and teaching in rural South Africa runs much deeper than the lack of infrastructure alone. As a result he launched the Nelson Mandela Institute.

The work of the Institute

The Nelson Mandela Institute is a small yet efficient organisation committed to finding sustainable solutions that work in real classrooms, thereby ensuring quality education and development for all.

Founded on a working partnership between government, civil society and higher education, the Institute focuses on the interface between research, its application and demonstration, and teacher training. Solutions are developed in consultation with teachers, parents, communities and other stakeholders, and are theoretically sound and practically sustainable and transferable. All have been tried and tested to ensure efficacy in a rural setting.

Dissatisfied by research that failed to take into account the difficulties of rural schooling, the Nelson Mandela Institute conducts its own research into effective education in rural contexts, and translates findings into teaching tools and a curriculum that works.

At a policy level, the Nelson Mandela Institute engages in debate and dialogue around national policy and processes involving public education. By working closely with government, the Institute hopes to build capacity within schools countrywide and make teaching tools widely available.