The international PIRLS Study (2017) and other studies confirm that SA has one of the world’s worst education systems with declining teaching quality and growing student disengagement and parent abdication. After 4 years of education, 78% of SA children cannot read for meaning. Early reading deficits cause most children to fall further behind over time and help explain why almost half of all students in SA drop out of school and receive no school qualification.

These very poor outcomes are symptoms of a highly dysfunctional education system that operates within a context of disintegrated communities. Instead of pointing fingers at our “failing” schools or the 10 million children attending them, we believe in entrusting school principals with the task of improving the functionality of their schools. However, principals need to be properly equipped for this complex task .