The global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic extended to the education sector in South Africa, prompting the implementation of preventative measures by the National Coronavirus Command Council. These COVID-19 protocols included the wearing of face masks or face shields, ensuring maximum ventilation, washing of hands, and school attendance routines…

To realise the ideal of quality inclusive education, proper financial management is vital. Existing literature indicates that the mismanagement of school funds is largely due to principals and the school governing bodies (SGB) in many schools not having good working relationships with stakeholders and lacking the necessary financial skills, more…

Universities should conduct research and provide services to the society in their environment. In this article, the relational leadership model was used to evaluate a University-Community partnership in a semi-rural context in South Africa. The relational leadership model is an aspirational model supporting a healthy, ethical, and effective group.…

Following the closure of educational institutions, after the outbreak of COVID-19 in December 2019, even though grossly unprepared, universities sent their students home and adopted the online teaching approach to continue with the education of their students. However, little was done to assist most African students who were living in the rural…

Well-being is realised through the interaction of the individual's desires and capacities, and external contexts. Contexts in postcolonial societies diverge from the assumptions of functioning liberal democratic states and capitalist economies often assumed in theories of schooling. Instead, these contexts are characterised by poverty and…

Many rural children in South Africa are subjected to social isolation, poor quality schooling and other related challenges, which impacts their growth and development and access to post-school educational opportunities. Well-functioning boarding schools offer a solution but research in South Africa is still in its infancy. Using the theoretical…

This article argues that we have lost the plot in South African reading education. To find it, we need to move beyond the predominant mode of reading as oral performance, where the emphasis is on accuracy and pronunciation, to reading as comprehension of meaning in text. While reading research in South Africa has been conducted mainly in school…

Since Apple released the iPad in 2010, it has been widely adopted for teaching and learning. Its graphical user interface combined with touch screen features engages users by attracting their attention. However, the level of engagement that would influence learning is not well understood. This case study investigated the use of iPads when engaging…

One of the major challenges in teaching English to speakers of other languages is the issue of inadequate contact time between teachers and learners and between learners and comprehensible English language input. This paper emanated from a burning desire to help learners in South African educational institutions, especially those in remote areas,…

This paper provides an in-depth analysis into two case studies aimed at addressing the digital divide in two developing countries. A detailed description is provided for each case study along with an analysis of how successful the two projects were at addressing the digital divide in Siyabuswa, South Africa and Ennis, Ireland. The two case studies…

This paper presents a spatial analysis of multiple deprivation in South Africa and demonstrates that the most deprived areas in the country are located in the rural former homeland areas. The analysis is undertaken using the datazone level South African Index of Multiple Deprivation which was constructed from the 2001 Census. Datazones are a new…

This article draws on data collected from a wider, longitudinal life history study conducted in South Africa between 2010 and 2014. The study focussed specifically on the personal and professional pathways to principalship of a sample of women leaders of co-educational high schools in South Africa, in both rural and peri-urban provinces: a role…

This paper describes the habitus and technological practices of a South African rural student in his first year at university. This student is one of five self-declared rural students, from a group of 23 first-years in four South African universities, whose access to, and use of, technologies in their learning and everyday lives was investigated…

Purpose: New innovative ways of communicating agrometeorological information are needed to help farmers, especially subsistence/small-scale farmers, to cope with the high climate variability experienced in most parts of southern Africa. Design/methodology/approach: The article introduces an early warning system for farmers. It utilizes short…

Some historically black schools manage to do quite well despite their circumstances, such as dire poverty. We aim at explicating some of the causal factors regarding the effectiveness of three schools in deep rural Mpumalanga, South Africa by tapping the perceptions of their learners. Data were collected from learner samples (four girls and four…