For decades, South Africa has grappled with an education system that seems to promise much but deliver little. Despite commendable reforms and bursts of innovation, the country’s schools remain unequal, under-resourced, and often poorly governed. The result is a crisis that goes far deeper than declining mathematics enrolments or underperforming universities: it is a crisis of national competence.
Higher Education and Training Minister Buti Manamela has intervened at the Mangosuthu University of Technology (MUT), meeting the institution’s council and management amid renewed governance and leadership instability following the end of its administration period.
Education authorities and opposition politicians have urged public schools not to withhold report cards over unpaid school fees, after complaints that some pupils ended the 2025 academic year without knowing whether they had progressed to the next grade.
National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) acting CEO Waseem Carrim says the entity has entered a “new era of stability, governance reform and operational rebuilding” after years of turbulence, delays and governance failures that shook confidence across the higher education sector.
The Aliko Dangote Foundation, chaired by Africa’s richest man, has committed ₦1 trillion ($688 million) to strengthening Nigeria’s education sector over the next decade, in what is set to become one of the largest private philanthropic investments in the country’s schooling system.
The principal of Samit Christian Academy, an independent school in Kempton Park, Gauteng, was killed in what police confirmed as a house robbery in the early hours of Sunday in Maokeng Extension, Tembisa.
Education experts and teachers are calling on parents to become more involved in their children’s academic lives, stressing that parental support plays a decisive role in a learner’s performance, confidence and long-term success.
Science communicator and journalist Sibusiso Biyela says the future of inclusive science on the continent depends on whether scientific knowledge can be meaningfully communicated in African languages - not as a symbolic gesture, but as a necessity.
South Africa's largest teachers' union has condemned some schools for barring underperforming students from sitting final-year exams, ostensibly in an effort to inflate pass rates.
