Nic Spaull

The aim of the Q&A series is to get an inside look into some of South Africa’s leading education academics, policy-makers and activists. This is the sixteenth interview in the series. Percy Moleke is Programme Manager and Coordinator of the Human Capabilities and Social Protection Working Group of the National Planning Commission. 

1)   In your career, why did you choose to focus on education and social policy and how did you get where you are now?

While studying economics, which has been my favourite subject since Matric many moons ago, the social part made much more sense to me. When I proceeded to university, the social electives were much more attractive, i.e. public sector economics, public finance, labour economics, economics of education were my favourite electives. It is their closeness to reality, and to my personal background that made sense; even econometric analysis related to these subjects made sense. I related to them in many ways and they gave a sense that what I was learning could make a difference. I am mostly attracted by the role of social policy in addressing inequality and particularly looking at the linkages between education and the labour market and understanding their role in addressing inequality. I believe they (education and labour market) are the root cause of inequality (engineered by apartheid) and should thus be key instruments in addressing inequality.

Education and hard work got me where I am. A bit of luck and a higher power helped definitely, but only if you work hard. Patience and being realistic are also part of the ingredients/characters.

 2)   What does your average week look like?

My weeks vary. Some are packed with meetings, which are a must when you are a public servant, and they demand a lot. Most of these require preparation, reading, preparing presentations, etc. Some weeks are a few meetings and one gets time to read a bit and reflect on issues, i.e. brainstorm with colleagues. This does not happen as often as I would like though. Some weeks are a mixture of all sorts of things, meetings, a bit of reading, a bit of trying to sort out some problem(s), a lot of time on the phone and email, and/or face to face with colleagues talking through some issue(s), writing some note/speech, a bit of whining, etc. these are long and happens more often that I would like. But all these are necessary and part of the job. I think this is why my job is interesting, sounds contradictory. I bemoan the lack of time to read and attend engagements such as seminars/workshops, etc., which makes weeks and days even longer. It means compromising evenings/nights and weekends as these are used for reading to catch up. Reading is a necessary part of the job, but time for it is not adequately factored in.

3)   While I’m sure you’ve read many books and articles in your career, if you had to pick one or two that have been especially influential for you, which one or two would they be and why?

Hard to say as I read a variety of books and articles. My reading currently is influenced by the area of work I am busy with. So I am reading in education (ECD, schooling, vocational education, higher education), labour markets, social protection, as these are the areas I am working on. I was an influenced reader when I was younger. I would recall that some of the work that influenced my interests and a broader key message of interest in each are Becker’s work on Human Capital and equally Blaug’s work on education as a ‘screening device’, and Thurow’s work on labour market as a training market rather than an auction market. Then there is Hanushek’s work, I think it brings together a group of good analysts in the area of economics of education. It is like a ‘reference’ source. For a young student (then), with interest in education and labour markets, it was fascinating to read their work and the different views. But it also highlighted the important yet complex relationship between education and the labour market. My reading processes have changed since then. I distil critical messages from my readings; I don’t have any particular favourite. I would however prescribe Outliers to all students in particular. Hard work pays but it does not come easy and is not immediate, practice, practice and practice.

 4)   What do you think is the most under-researched area in South African education?

I think, most areas have been researched, but under-researched. Meaning it is the same narrative, almost similar analysis, hence same outcomes/messages from the research.

But I will go with the following:

First; is accountability in education. We all know that teachers are a critical component for improvement in education, we all point fingers at teachers (and Sadtu) for poor performance, we point to teachers’ poor content knowledge, etc.  I have not seen an analysis that looks at why teachers (a large proportion of them) in our system are doing so badly. What is the impact of poor education administration on school performance? Econometric analysis that I have seen says, not much, but I argue that if one was to use a different methodology to assess this, you may find that it has a huge impact. Hence we cannot only point fingers at teachers when there is poor performance, if they do not get support from the districts, provinces, national, they can’t be blamed. Teachers in performing schools have mostly gone through the same training as those in under-performing schools, why does the issue of teachers’ mastery of content an issue in under-performing schools and not in other schools?

Similarly, why is Sadtu so powerful? I think it point to failure of management/administration. Lines are blurred. It is almost as if we have not defined the line between a teacher and an administrator/management in the system. In my view, once a person becomes a principal/district /provincial/national official they take on a different role in the system, their labour relations interests cannot be represented by Sadtu. And I think that happens because of the way our ‘education system’ has evolved. There is no accountability built in the system.

The second; is centralisation versus decentralisation of education. It is related to the first, but takes a slightly different angle. Here as well I think the lines are blurred. Hence accountability is an issue. Who do we hold accountable for what in education, and who is responsible for what part of the system. Given the vast geographical differences in our country, should we decentralise more (and to what level, i.e. Province or District or School) or is centralisation the best model, what part of the system should be centralised/decentralised. What are the lessons from the past 20 years or so?

The third is related to foundation learning. Starting from ECD (not Grade R, but prior to that). Here one of the areas that I think need thorough research relates to the language of instruction and the impact of learning or not learning in mother tongue at foundation phase for future performance. I don’t think this issue is well understood and properly contextualised. It seems many people are saying teach in mother tongue at foundation phase? I wonder if, despite what international evidence say, we understand what this means in the South African context and how correct and feasible this is.

 5)   What is the best advice you’ve been given?

To apply in my life – love what you are doing and give it your best shot, it makes doing it enjoyable and easy. And don’t be afraid to try new things, it is okay to fail as long as you learn lessons from failure and do better next time.

To apply at work- inconsistency in application/implementation can turn an excellent public policy into a bad policy.

6)   As Programme Manager and Coordinator of the Human Capabilities and Social Protection Working Group of the NPC,  I’m sure you have considerable first-hand experience of the real-world challenges that those in government face on a daily basis. Can you explain some of the under-appreciated challenges faced by the NPC?

I think people forget that it is only now that as a country we are appreciating the importance of having a long-term plan for the country, that this is a ‘new function’ in government. The NPC does not have answers and shares everyone’s concerns with respect to how the NDP will be implemented. We are all learning.

It is also under-appreciated that the NPC as a structure is not properly institutionalised. Sometimes there are huge expectations and while the NPC tries its best, it has not been worked out how it operates and relate to other functions of government. Every department has its ‘planning’ unit, but we know the challenges with how these are conceptualised and function. We need to work out how these interface with the NPC, National Treasury, StatsSA, etc. as all these form part of the planning function. It is exciting that the ANC, in its manifesto, put this issue of institutionalising planning on the agenda. It must happen. We need to improve our planning in government, and move from high level plans to planning implementation to the ‘t’. Planning is not an event with a defined single output –A plan, it is a continuous, iterative process.

There are also expectations that because there is now an NPC and NDP implementation will improve. NDP is still very high level, and most of the proposals need to be unpacked. I am not sure if the NPC is given enough space and time to unpack these proposals and engage with those who should implement. The advantage of the NPC is that you have people who are not drowned in the day to day running of line-function departments, hence should have space to read, think differently about the challenges of implementation and support line-function departments in every step of the implementation process. Department officials should be relying on the NPC to assist and support. It can be a neutral player as it has no interest except to support, improve coordination and bring in fresh thinking. Currently most of the challenges get picked up during monitoring of progress by the Department of Monitoring and Evaluation, and even then, it is still high level monitoring, the fault- lines are missed. Most of these fault-lines are in implementation plans and strategies, which, most of the time do not exist. This however, cannot happen with a structure that is under-capacitated. Commissioners are not full-time, it is difficult to get all Commissioners to a meeting for example, and there is a small secretariat.

7)   If you weren’t in education what do you think you would be doing?

 An environmentalist of sorts. I think I will be spending time doing something related to studying and protecting animals, I have a special liking of the big cats. National Geographic is my favourite TV channel.

8)   Technology in education going forward – are you a fan or a sceptic?

A bit of both. I like face to face interaction. Maybe it’s because of my age! But I also think given our socio-economic challenges, it may perpetuate inequality (some would say it may be the game changer). We should not underestimate the poor access to basics of technology for most poor people in this country!

I recently read a book by Salman Khan –The One World School House. It made me think about the possibilities of technology in education, especially in instances where teachers’ content knowledge is lacking. It also scared me a bit, because I think it is not about ‘if’ but ‘when’ technology will be a key component in education. It makes me scared because I am not sure if we are ready for that.

I am also influenced by the increasing number of young people who are doing wonders with technology.

9) If you were given a R10 million research grant what would you use it for?

I interpret research broadly. I would use it to pilot different ways of improving quality teaching and learning in different contexts in SA. We all complain about poor quality of education, but I am not sure we know what we are complaining about and what to do about it. What works in what context and how to effect change. One of the fascinating areas to investigate is what is happening in the Quintile 2 schools that seem to be performing relatively well, what makes them work and why not in other schools. We need to move away from high level talk and analysis and understand what is happening at the school level, at the individual learner level. Our policies and intervention programmes must be informed by that.

Part of the problem I think is that we ‘overuse’ senior certificate results as a measure of how our system is doing. By the time learners are in Grade 12, it is a bit too late, because they are exiting the system. Meanwhile, every semester at least and yearly learners write exams in each Grade, we do not know how they are performing at the lower Grades, their progression, etc., and there is no mechanisms to use these results to understand performance at lower Grades and find ways to improve. We only wake up to the fact that about 40-50 per cent of a cohort that started Grade 1 is not writing senior secondary certificate, but are not sure at what point in the system do things begin to go bad and why, thus how can we intervene. We speculate that it at the end of the compulsory phase – Grade 9 or age 15, but the question is why a rational learner would drop out of the system when there are no positive prospects for them beyond that point.

R10 million is not a lot of money, but I would also invest a bit on education planning. I am referring to broad planning, understanding the implications of demographics, migration, social dynamics, town planning and developments, etc. on education provision and funding of education.

10) Having considerable experience in higher education in South Africa, you are well positioned to answer the following question: what do you think are the major challenges facing the higher education sector in South Africa in the next 10 years?

Inability to reproduce itself. I would spend all my money on ensuring that output in higher education increase both quantitatively and qualitatively, from undergraduate to post graduate. It is scary, and I am not sure if we are paying enough attention to this. I don’t use the term crisis often and loosely, but I think we are facing a crisis there. This is also because higher education has to produce skilled people for the economy as well. The pool is very small. Progress in development of this country is dependent on what we do in this area today I would argue. If we do not turn the wheel now, we should forget about taking this country to a higher and positive trajectory.

Related to the first challenge is the small size of the sector. We must look beyond the enrolment numbers in higher education and focus on participation rate, the distribution of these numbers by area of study and the throughput (graduates). While it is understandable that to grow the size, schooling has to improve and grow even faster, there is more that can be done to make the system more efficient. The failure and drop-out rates at these institutions are unacceptable.

The third challenge relates to clarity of identity and mission of our institutions, FET Colleges, and the newly proposed Community Colleges, Adult Education Centres and Comprehensive Universities and Universities of Technology. I am not sure if it is clear for young people in secondary school today what options they have when they leave school, which option is better suited for their career choices, pros-and cons of each, etc. For example, do they have to study up to matric to gain entry into an FET College, and is this applicable to all areas of study?

Universities are expected to be everything to everyone, because they have a relatively good reputation compared to Colleges. If we do not ensure that we clean up the image of colleges, ensure that they produce quality graduates who are employable, then we will continue to put pressure on universities, hence they have so many students doing Diplomas, which should be done in Colleges. It is pointless to have high numbers of young people in Colleges when the outcome of that is not of value for the individual, the economy and society.

 The fourth I think is the link between higher education and the world of work. The two seem to be operating in isolation. There are pockets of cooperation and linkages, but for the most part there is a serious disconnect. You see this in teaching, research, innovation and employability issues.

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Some of the other academics/policy-makers/activists on my “to-interview” list include Thabo Mabogoane, Veronica McKay, Volker Wedekind, John Kruger, Jonathan Jansen, and Khulekani Mathe. If you have any other suggestions drop me a mail and I’ll see what I can do.

The aim of the Q&A series is to get an inside look into some of South Africa’s leading education academics, policy-makers and activists. This is the fifteenth interview in the series. Joy Olivier is co-founder and Director of Ikamva Youth.

1)   Why did you decide to go into education and how did you get where you are?

In 2003 I was working at the HSRC, looking at how research and development and science, technology and innovation (STI) drive the economy. We were also looking at the transformation of the scientific community for NACI, and this brought me to the (then) Higher Grade maths and science results of black matriculants. My colleague Makhosi Gogwana and I shared an office, and talked about this a lot. Initially, I thought there must be something wrong with the data as the numbers of learners who were matriculating with results that made them eligible to study anything requiring Maths and Science in an entire province were more like what should be coming out of a handful of schools. Makhosi had gone to junior school in the Eastern Cape, and then moved to a high school in Khayelitsha for secondary for a better education. In comparing our educational backgrounds, we realised that what’s missing for learners in disadvantaged areas are information and support. Naive, optimistic and driven to do something about the problem we were learning about, we called up Makhosi’s old school and sent emails to our friends asking who wants to tutor. Everyone said yes and Ikamva Youth (IY) was born. I had no idea that what was essentially a hobby would become my full time job – never mind other peoples’!

2)   What does your average week look like?

I don’t really have an average week. In the past two weeks I’ve had to go to Joza township near Grahamstown to deal with an organisational crisis, and am currently at an airport on my way back from a workshop with one of our donors in San Francisco.

My work pings me between the extremities of poverty and wealth; between townships and palaces. It can be quite discombobulating, but I also feel really lucky to have these super diverse experiences. I’m always learning a LOT.

3)   While I’m sure you’ve read many books and articles in your career, if you had to pick two or three that have been especially influential for you which two or three would they be and why?

• Paul Tough: How Children Succeed

He summarises the work that’s been done with disadvantaged, poor-performing high school students very well, and makes a convincing argument that change can happen at this level.

• Malcolm Gladwell – Outliers

Reminding us that believing that you can do it, and having access to middle-class resources like networks, advice, community norms of tertiary education and access to employment, are some of the things that explain the disparities in academic achievement between under- and well-resourced kids.

4)   Who do you think are the current two or three most influential/eminent thinkers in your field and why?

Nic Spaull 😛 He’s super smart and has a wonderful mix of passion to do something balanced with an analytical and critical view on things.

It’s pretty depressing that I can’t think of anyone else right now, but it could also be the jetlag

5)   What do you think is the most under-researched area in South African education?

It’s crazy to me that we don’t know the percentage of black kids going into university that come from disadvantaged areas. Without knowing this and then seeking to improve on it, we’re essentially ensuring the perpetuation of inequality and the widening gap between rich and poor.

6)   What is the best advice you’ve been given?

Leigh Meinert told me that people take you seriously when you start to take yourself seriously. She was right.

7)   If you ended up sitting next to the Minister of Education on a plane and she asked you what you think are the three biggest challenges facing South African education today, what would you say?

1. Someone has to take on the unions. Teachers are not “workers”; it’s a profession, and not showing up to work and striking when you’re supposed to be teaching is not only unprofessional, it’s diabolical.
2. Rather than have curriculum delivered to them, learners need to learn how to learn. The focus should be on pedagogy and peer learning; there is WAY too much focus on curriculum and content.
3. Literacy and Numeracy.

8)   If you weren’t in education what do you think you would be doing?

Hmm good question. Community psychology, maybe. Or perhaps an entrepreneurial venture that has a smart way to reduce inequality. Oh actually what I’m doing falls into both of these things. I think I’d like to find a model that’s self-sustaining and not donor reliant. When things are heavy and the stress of responsibility and challenges get to me I think I might like to be a lady of leisure, although I know that wouldn’t last too long.

9)   Technology in education going forward – are you a fan or a sceptic?

So this was my field, when I worked at bridges.org and then did my masters in Ed and Tech. And it made me a sceptic. However, I do feel that mobile tech and some of the apps are starting to look really promising. I’m excited about what Siyavula and Fundza are doing, and with most kids having feature phones and Internet access gradually becoming more of a reality, I’m shifting back towards potential fanhood.

10) If you were given a R10million research grant what would you use it for?

I’d like find answers to these questions:

• See answer to q5 above.

Then IY-specific qs:

• How many learners in township and rural schools would opt into being a part of IY if they had the opportunity?
• How much of our learners’ results are due to their being a part of IY and how much is due to what they would have achieved anyway without us?
• Which aspects of what we do feed into the results, and which bits are just nice to have or could be tweaked to be more efficient (eg. learner:tutor ratio, winter school etc.)
• Piloting different models of online tutoring and seeing what works.

11) Ikamva Youth  is a highly successful NGO providing meaningful opportunities to many South African youth. What would you say are the three or four major “ingredients” in its success?

•  A culture of learning and collaboration, where learning is cool and learners are motivated to attend
• Low cost, high impact (with clear metrics for measuring impact)
• Learners becoming tutors; they’re amazing role models who are changing their communities
• Focus is on learning and not content

12) Ikamva Youth is a grass-roots organization with considerable links to the community and to students. In many countries around the world there is often a disconnect between what is happening at a national-policy level and what the reality is on the ground – do you believe this is also the case in South Africa? And if so, in which areas is this disconnect most apparent? 

Yebo. There is some awareness of the usefulness of extending school hours, which is great, with SSIP and other after-school programmes being implemented. However, what’s being implemented in most places is just more of what’s already not working for more money. Its really frustrating when initiatives get scaled up and funds spent without any tracking or monitoring of results and impact.

13) What would you say are the three major difficulties faced by civil-society organizations in South Africa, and what advice would you give to people who are in the start-up phase of an NGO? 

• Hiring experienced, good people who can exceed expectations is a major challenge and a key to getting things right
• Decide what you want to achieve and how you’re going to measure whether or not you’re achieving it from the beginning
• Think about self-sustainability models from the beginning
• Always stretch to implement learnings and grow, but don’t stretch too much too quickly

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Some of the other academics/policy-makers/activists on my “to-interview” list include Thabo Mabogoane, Veronica McKay, Volker Wedekind, John Kruger, Jonathan Jansen, Khulekani Mathe, and Percy Moleke. If you have any other suggestions drop me a mail and I’ll see what I can do.

The aim of the Q&A series is to get an inside look into some of South Africa’s leading education academics, policy-makers and activists. This is the thirteenth interview in the series. Dr Jonathan Clark is the director of both the Schools Development Unit and the Schools Improvement Initiative at UCT.

1)   Why did you decide to go into education and how did you get where you are?

After I finished my science degree I had no idea what I wanted to do. I was offered a job at Rossing (a mine in Namibia) and took it. It was a great experience but I knew from the outset that I wasn’t cut out for a life in steel-capped boots. So I spent two years saving money and then took off for the Middle East and Europe. A year into my travels, no closer to having a clue about what I should do next, a friend took me for a walk in a park in London and convinced me to become a teacher. I returned to South Africa and after completing my teaching qualification started working at a rural school called Nchaupe High in the village of Makapanstad, north of Pretoria. Three years later I moved down to Cape Town and Luhlaza High in Khayelitsha. I taught science, worked as a departmental subject advisor and ran a school (COSAT) in the township over the next 16 years. I moved to UCT to head up the Schools Development Unit (SDU) in the School of Education towards the end of 2007.

2)   What does your average week look like?

It’s quite long! I’m trying to juggle two jobs in one at the moment – my substantive post is as Director of the SDU and I’m also heading up one of the Vice Chancellor’s strategic initiatives – the Schools Improvement Initiative (SII). So it’s a bit of a challenge to fit everything in. I’m essentially in an administrative post, so I spend a lot of time in meetings and struggle to find time to do any research. There’s a lot of people management involved and the SDU is soft-funded so finding money and managing budgets keeps me busy too. Rather late in life I’ve found that I quite enjoy the financial side of things, so it’s not a strain but certainly a pre-occupation.  The multi-tasking keeps me on my toes and stops me getting bored!

I don’t get out into the field very often, but when I do it’s invariably back to Khayelitsha where the SII is working.  I feel quite an affinity with the township having spent (as mentioned early) so much time there.

3)   While I’m sure you’ve read many books and articles in your career, if you had to pick two or three that have been especially influential for you which two or three would they be and why?

That’s a tough question. I’ve wide interests in education and I’m a bit of a magpie in my reading. More recently, I was most taken by Diane Ravitch’s ‘The Life and Death of the Great American Schooling System’. The writings of Michael Fullan and Andy Hargreaves, individually and together have always made a deep impression on me; Fullan’s ‘The new meaning of educational change’ remains a favourite. When I was doing my doctorate, a book by Harber & Davies called: ‘School management and effectiveness in developing countries: The post-bureaucratic school’, had a huge impact on my thinking, particularly their notion of school ineffectiveness.

4)   Who do you think are the current two or three most influential/eminent thinkers in your field and why?

Richard Elmore’s work on school reform and the long shadows of Michael Fullan and Andy Hargreaves continued collaboration – they might be getting on in years but still write passionately about the need to transform education.

5)   What do you think is the most under-researched area in South African education?

For all what we think we know about teachers’ actual classroom practices, I think we actually have very little understanding of what really goes on at the chalk/whiteboard face. Particularly when it comes to working class urban and rural schooling, I think we tend to under-estimate the degree to which the pedagogic practices of teachers are forged in context and strongly influenced by their own lived experiences of schooling.  I’m of the opinion that many teachers operate in what are essentially ‘closed-loop’ systems which are very, very resistant to change.

How to support and enable teachers’ to bring about meaningful improvements in teaching and (critically) student learning in such contexts is, ‘the rub’ (so to speak)…

6)   What is the best academic advice you’ve been given?

 Evidence, evidence, evidence – particularly when engaging in qualitative research, the challenge lies in backing up your knowledge claims.

7)   If you ended up sitting next to the Minister of Education on a plane and she asked you what you think are the three biggest challenges facing South African education today, what would you say?

Firstly, we have to build the content, pedagogic and classroom organisational skills of teachers and capacitate school managers – we have no choice but to invest heavily in teacher professional and school organisational development.

Over a second drink, I might loosen up a bit and share with her my thoughts about the tensions between accountability and support which I believe permeate through all levels of the education system; and muse on the dilemmas we face in this regard. For how (I would ask her rhetorically) can we hold teachers and school managers to account unless we have in place functional support systems at levels from circuit through district to provincial and national levels?

I’d share some of my own experiences in the field, but seek to be humble – I’ve never under-estimated the immense complexity of (say) trying to run a large, under-resourced working class school in a community mired in poverty. It’s almost ironic isn’t it? The settings which require the most skilful practice, are inevitably the ones with the least ‘curriculum and organisational capital’ (as I like to think of it).

Then there’s the need to build the expertise of the technical core of the State so that it can play a more decisive supportive role.

By the third drink I would probably be saying something totally inappropriate about the power of the majority union…

8)   If you weren’t in education what do you think you would be doing?

I’d be an archaeologist; I’m fascinated by our past; or a meteorologist – but not one of those working on complex mathematical modelling, one who spends his time staring at clouds…

 9)   Technology in education going forward – are you a fan or a sceptic?

A fan, I think technology has immense potential to positively impact on teaching and learning. For a start, just think of the amount of paper we would save if we didn’t have to print millions of textbooks each year! But I definitely don’t see technology as some kind of panacea which will automatically improve things. I’m too much of a traditionalist I’m afraid, I think the teacher as mediator of learning still has an absolutely central role to play in the educational process.

And that’s what perturbs me, I don’t know how we are going to transform our ‘low skills’ base teaching corps into more effective users of educational technology – do you know how many un-used electronic whiteboards there are littered around the country? From the view of a typical working class school, the ‘flip classroom’ seems a paradigm away…

10) If you were given a R5 million research grant what would you use it for?

 A ten-year longitudinal study focusing on the unfolding narratives of practice of young teachers entering the profession and finding their ways in township schools.

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Some of the other academics/policy-makers/activists on my “to-interview” list include Thabo Mabogoane, Veronica McKay, Volker Wedekind, John Kruger, Jonathan Jansen, Khulekani Mathe, Percy Moleke, and Joy Oliver. If you have any other suggestions drop me a mail and I’ll see what I can do.

The aim of the Q&A series is to get an inside look into some of South Africa’s leading education academics, policy-makers and activists. This is the eleventh interview in the series.  Linda Biersteker is the head of research at the Early Learning Resource Unit (ELRU) in Cape Town. 

1)   Why did you decide to go into education and how did you get where you are?
I have always been interested in development and education and was involved with youth at SHAWCO when I studied at UCT in my psychology major year I opted for a child development research project which took me to the Athlone Early Learning Centre, a Head Start type intervention the first of its kind in South Africa.  It was my first exposure to preschool education (I was a nursery school run-away in my own childhood) and I was hooked. When I joined the research department there and later the Early Learning Resource Unit, early learning was very undeveloped in South Africa, and we did everything, designed new programmes, wrote materials, developed training for the large numbers of untrained women working with poor children across the country and were key in the policy development process for ECD in a democratic South Africa.    In addition to directing research at the Early Learning Resource Unit, I have also worked on numerous research, programme development and training assignments for international agencies  as well as academic institutions and with NGOs.   This year I am freelancing though I still have research links to the Early Learning Resource Unit.

The aim of the Q&A series is to get an inside look into some of South Africa’s leading education academics, policy-makers and activists. This is the tenth interview in the series.  Hamsa Venkatakrishnan is an Associate Professor at Wits and holds the position of SA Numeracy Chair . 

1)   Why did you decide to go into education?

Had decided by the time I was 10 or 11 that I wanted to be a teacher, and probably, a maths teacher. I had no thoughts, at the point at which I started teaching, that I would become an academic working in a university – that came quite a lot later. I’m not sure what prompted wanting to teach – but my mum had been a teacher and her father had been a lecturer – so they were probably both influences.

2)   What does your average week look like?

I don’t really have an ‘average’ week – which is part of what I like about the job I currently do. Some days (and some weeks), I am in schools for most of the time, I teach undergraduate seminars and postgraduate courses, and do a lot of postgraduate supervision.  I also go to conferences, nationally and internationally, and sit in meetings – at my university, with teachers and with policy makers. I love the fact that my current role as SA Numeracy Chair, leading a 5 year research and development project aimed at improving primary maths teaching and learning, allows me to teach everything from Grade 1 classes to PhD students. That range is unusual – and great fun!

3)   While I’m sure you’ve read many books and articles in your career, if you had to pick one or two that have been especially influential for you which one or two would they be and why?

I love reading, and all kinds of reading – from mathematics education, to classic literature, to Cosmopolitan! In education, I read a range of work, both theoretical and empirical, but really admire the people who write in thoughtful and accessible ways about how we might re-think teaching and learning. In mathematics education, I think Professor Anne Watson at Oxford University does this really well, as does Professor Mike Askew at Monash University.

More broadly, I like classic literature – the girly stuff like Jane Austen and George Eliot, and lots of modern world literature. I also loved reading Sunday papers all day when I lived in London. And yes, Cosmopolitan is good fun too!

4)   Who do you think are the current two or three most influential/eminent thinkers in your field and why?

It’s quite hard to narrow down two or three ‘most influential’ thinkers in mathematics education, or in education more broadly, because the church is a broad one with diverse interests and multiple sub-fields. While there are ‘eminent’ thinkers in maths education, what counts as ‘influential’ is eclectic and subjective and shifts over time. So, influential for me at the moment, George Lakoff’s work on human understanding of concepts through embodied cognition. And lots of people working in the field of mathematics teacher knowledge and maths teaching development – Deborah Ball, Brent Davis and Jill Adler amongst these.

5)   What do you think is the most under-researched area in South African education?

I am increasingly interested in understanding what people think children should be able to do mathematically at various stages of schooling, and then thinking about what teachers need to do to develop these competences. I don’t think we have sufficiently shared understandings – even within mathematics education – about what children should be able to do, and we seem reluctant to build the platforms and networks and engage in the hard conversations that might allow us to develop more shared perspectives across a terrain that is as riven with an inequitable history of access to education as South Africa is. Differences of opinion relate to both the type of mathematics children should be able to do, and the extent of the mathematics that schools should offer. For example, look at these two questions:

• 4/5  +  1/3  equals  ____
• How many fractions lie between 1/4 and 1/2?

Learner performance is usually higher on the first question than the second. I get mixed responses when I ask teachers and teacher educators whether they think that children should be able to answer both of these questions. Some say ‘Yes, children should be able to answer both’. Most say they have taught children how to work out the answer to the first question, but have not dealt with the idea underlying the second question. Underlying these differences in what gets taught are different views about what school mathematics is actually about.

I think it is critically important that children are able to answer both of the questions above, but I would go further. I think being able to do the first question without having any idea about how to answer the second is pretty useless. But we need to be able to understand what underlies these different positions, and then start building agreement over what we want children to be able to do and what we put in the school curriculum. If we don’t, I can’t see how we will move towards closing the gaps in performance that are so widespread on the ground. So that is my under-researched priority (for now!).

6)   What is the best academic advice you’ve been given?

‘Do it for as long as you enjoy it – and resign if it gets to the point that you don’t enjoy it any more’.

I’m still enjoying it enough to stay in!

7)   If you ended up sitting next to the Minister of Education on a plane and she asked you what you think are the three biggest challenges facing South African education today, what would you say?

1. Teacher content knowledge – and openings for developing this in ways that are useful for teaching. This might mean more conversations around the kinds of understandings underlying the second question above, rather than more practice of the first question – which is what many of us did more of in school
2. Lack of shared understandings of what mathematics we teach in school and why.
3. Access to good quality primary level education

8)   If you weren’t in education what do you think you would be doing?

I think I would have liked to be a scriptwriter – for film or television. Or a travel writer like Bill Bryson. But I think I am quite a vocational teacher – so would not want to lose being able to do that!

9)   Technology in education going forward – are you a fan or a sceptic?

            A fan, although a bit of a Luddite one in some ways!

10) If you were given a R5million research grant what would you use it for?

            Longitudinal studies that tracked through from developing teacher content knowledge from a teaching perspective, into supporting teachers to make mathematics more coherently and interestingly and purposively accessible to learn in classrooms. Research would aim to understand the conditions, constraints and development trajectories within these processes.

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A list of Hamsa’s publications can be found here. We are currently working on a joint paper (or two) analysing the SACMEQ III (2007) Grade 6 Mathematics teacher test data, and *hopefully* they’ll be finished in the next few months.

Some of the other academics/policy-makers on my “to-interview” list include Servaas van der Berg, Thabo Mabogoane, Veronica McKay, Jon Clark, Volker Wedekind, John Kruger, Linda Biersteker, Jonathan Jansen, Khulekani Mathe, Percy Moleke, and Joy Oliver. If you have any other suggestions drop me a mail and I’ll see what I can do.

The aim of the Q&A series is to get an inside look into some of South Africa’s leading education academics, policy-makers and activists. This is the ninth interview in the series.  Martin Gustafsson is  an advisor to the Director General in the South African Department of Basic Education and also a researcher in the RESEP Group at Stellenbosch University. 

1)   Why did you decide to go into education and how did you get where you are?

I suppose it all started with my own compulsory schooling, and then I found myself unable to leave. It’s an interesting world, education. One feels very much part of a grand reproductive cycle. I also see education as a powerful vehicle for changing society, bringing about a more just world. So it’s also about not reproducing more of the same.

2)   What does your average week look like?

Interesting. I basically have two fairly regular part-time jobs, one as a researcher, one as a government planner. It works for me.

3)   While I’m sure you’ve read many books and articles in your career, if you had to pick one or two that have been especially influential for you which one or two would they be and why?

I won’t talk about the fiction because you probably want to know about non-fiction. But fiction can also shape what one becomes as a person and a professional. I’d recommend Amartya Sen and Deirdre McCloskey, because of the way they combine passion, scepticism and science. And for helping me to understand South Africa, I have to thank, amongst others, Tom Lodge, Steve Biko and Hermann Giliomee, whose works have all helped me piece together a picture, in their different ways.

4)   Who do you think are the current two or three most influential/eminent thinkers in your field and why?

If I think of my field as the economics of education, which I often do, then clearly Hanushek and Psacharopoulos stand out, the latter more as a veteran who has seen a couple of very exciting decades and still reflects on them. Unfortunately, education planning, which I also see as a field, is still rather scattered and I’m not sure there is anyone who has really succeeded in bringing together the various strands and packaging a body of knowledge which might provide needed guidance to thousands of education administrators. Dan Inbar’s book on education planning is still a little gem that cuts through much of the nonsense and fads that education planners have to deal with.

5)   What do you think is the most under-researched area in South African education?

Difficult one, because virtually everything about education in South Africa is under-researched, by which I mean there’s not enough good research. Probably the things that make South Africa special are worth emphasising strongly: the language mix, exactly how education currently contributes towards breaking apartheid patterns in employment and entrepreneurship, and what can be done to improve that contribution.

6)   What is the best academic advice you’ve been given?

The T principle. Make sure you know enough big picture stuff (the horizontal bar), whilst making sure you also get good at a few technical things (the vertical). Without a bit of both, you’re stuck. I’m not sure where I got that T principle, it could have been from Luis Crouch, an amazing and sensible education economist who played an important role in the design of pro-poor funding policies in post-1994 South Africa.

7)   Being involved in the Department of Basic Education in South Africa I’m sure you have considerable first-hand experience of the real-world challenges that those in the civil service and in the Ministry face on a daily basis. Can you explain some of the under-appreciated challenges faced by the Director General and the Department?

There are lots of challenges, but let’s remember they’re not uniquely South African. Stifling bureaucracy, wrong people in the wrong jobs, corruption, and above all a cynical abandonment of any dream of a better future, these are features of governments around the world. I think some media and NGO pressure on government is good, some of it is not good at all. Amongst the latter I include poorly informed and populist pressure to create a first world country overnight. One gets better in stages, and understanding the complexities of this is something researchers, activists, journalists, but also government officials, need to do better. Otherwise we get stuck in a logjam of impossible expectations and despair.

8)   If you weren’t in education what do you think you would be doing?

Maybe acting. Or a politician. They’re of course related professions.

9)   Technology in education going forward – are you a fan or a sceptic?

I’m a fan. But I hate poorly informed hype, people who think it’s only a matter of faith, almost magic.

10) If you were given a R5-million research grant what would you use it for?

I’d use it for bursaries for young South Africans with potential to study economics of education, or something related, in good overseas institutions that are sensitive to developing country contexts. Okay, that’s not research, but it could lead to better and more research in future years.

11) Having a foot in both the academic and civil-service worlds, you are probably best positioned to answer the following question: what do you think could be done to bridge the gap between research and policy in education in South Africa?

Researchers and policy people need to meet face-to-face more often. Researchers need to read policy. What passes as ‘policy recommendations’ at the end of a lot of research documents is often horribly superficial and impractical. You can’t really make policy recommendations if you never read policy and don’t understand policymaking. We need to get over touchiness and power struggles, concerns over who is the master of the truth. We all understand bits of the puzzle, which is why we have to work collaboratively.

12) Given that you’ve done quite a lot of work on Latin American countries, what are the overarching lessons that you think we can learn from the education systems in places like Brazil and Chile?

My current favourites are, in the case of Chile, a government website that tells you, for each higher education institution and field, what graduates earn, and how soon they got jobs. Institutions are obliged, by law, to track ex-students for a few years and to report this information. In the case of Brazil, a standardised test applied at the first degree level in higher education institutions, where students do simple things like demonstrate their ability to reason logically. I should add the tests are field-specific. The resultant data, combined with data on the socio-economic status of students, is used to assess whether certain universities need management overhauls, or whether they should receive public funding for more student enrolments. I look at initiatives like this with envy, because our capacity and context in South Africa are not that different. We need to use data more creatively here.

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Martin is a prolific researcher and (unfortunately) only a fraction of his work is available in the public domain. His research is unashamedly policy-oriented and pragmatic yet it is still highly rigorous and far-reaching in scope. Largely as a result of this I would easily consider him one of the most influential researchers in South Africa as far as education policy is concerned. See his personal website (here) for a list of publications and related documents and see below for some of the articles I have found to be particularly interesting/useful:

• 2010. “South Africa’s economics of education: A stocktaking and an agenda for the way forward“. Paper co-written with Thabo Mabogoane.
• 2010. “Policy note on pre-primary schooling: An empirical contribution to the 2009 Medium Term Strategic Framework“
• 2011. “The when and how of leaving school: The policy implications of new evidence on secondary schooling in South Africa“
• His PhD dissertation is also quite fascinating and highly accessible – Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Some of the other academics/policy-makers on my “to-interview” list include Servaas van der Berg, Thabo Mabogoane, Veronica McKay, Hamsa Venkatakrishnan, Volker Wedekind, John Kruger, Linda Biersteker, Jonathan Jansen, Jon Clark, Khulekani Mathe, Percy Moleke, and Joy Oliver. If you have any other suggestions drop me a mail and I’ll see what I can do.