African Education Week 2013

THOUGHTS ON AFRICAN EDUCATION WEEK DAY ONE- FIRST SESSION.

This was my first time at African Education Week. This conference is southern Africa's biggest annual education showcase, featuring keynote speakers, workshops, panel debates, and trade exhibitors.  I arrived in Johannesburg of an early morning flight from Cape Town, taking the brand new 'Gautrain' shuttle (built for the Football world cup in 2010) to the Sandton Convention Centre and making it just in time to hear the first speaker, Dr Mamphela Ramphele open the conference. 

Now, Dr Ramphele is a long time critic of the current ANC-led South African Government and she wasted no time setting about them. Her assertion that "textbooks are the money laundering tool for the politically connected- that's why schools don't have textbooks"  caused a ripple of applause around the conference hall.  As did her assertion that the Education portfolio in government always seems to be encumbered with the weakest of the political elite in Africa.

She then criticised the current state of South African Education, particularly it's lack of technology, poor standard of teaching and professional development, and reliance on printed textbooks, promising a whole raft of improvements in the manifesto of her political party, Agang, at the elections in 2014. You can read her speech here

 Dr Ramphele is a controversial figure in South African Politics and she certainly lived up to her reputation in her speech. I'd put in a note of caution to Dr Ramphele here- education is a big conversation. You can't just announce policy, you must first join the conversation.  Particularly with regard to testing and assessment. It's not enough just to talk in raw scores and the raising of so-called pass mark levels..

I have to admit the next speaker left me a bit cold. Businessman and 'motivator' Kelly Ritchie appeared to spend his twenty five minutes shouting and taking his clothes off, even managing to forget his mic clip in the process. I'm still not sure what his message to the conference was really all about. I think others around me shared that view, judging from their bemused expressions.

 Luckily, Louise Van Rhyn rescued the morning with a thoughtful presentation echoing her Cape Town TED talk earlier this year. The message of school improvement by the community and business is similar to the ABCD approach developed by Cormac Russell . I'm not sure I agree with her thoughts on the quality of educational leadership though...I believe there is tremendous capacity to lead in our education system with talented people keen to step up and realise their potential. I know from my own management experience in industry that the skills required to lead in business are not always the same as in education and style can definitely be very different. Whilst business leaders can bring much to the table, what is really needed in order for South African Education to better realise leadership potential is good quality targeted professional development in education leadership and management.

Gavin Keller was brilliant, for me, the star of the morning. A real example of South African Educational leadership talent in action. Inspiring and culturally relevant, he held the conference hall in the palm of his hand- one educator to a hall full of others. A great presentation on responsibility and leadership with a nod to neurobiology. Change is too slow because teachers don't feel 'worthy' . Confidence is a key factor in effective leadership. I agree. I'm pretty sure he's a fan of Andy Hargreaves too... The take home message for me is that we need to nurture the emotional capacity of our educators in schools if we want to encourage change and success.

Johannes Cronje spoke next about leading change in a digital age. In a fantastically engaging presentation with much of it off the cuff, he took the audience on a journey of how he's kept up with the changing digital landscape. Making the point that with SMS and WhatsApp, as well as twitter and Facebook, our students probably read more than they ever did before.  His talk covered some of his experiences with his own students and you can see his presentation here.

Interestingly, both Johannes and Gavin took pot- shots at the humble pencil. I'm not sure I agree with this, indeed I think the demise of the pencil has been greatly exaggerated, to paraphrase the famous quote. I do agree with the thrust of both these speakers and Dr Ramphele in reinforcing the tablet agenda. Anything which gets rid of the annual text-book beano has to be welcomed, however, I'd strike a note of caution here as the eBook publishing vultures hover poised to push their wares onto unsuspecting schools flush with their shiny new tablets. Think before you buy- the age of Open Education Resources is well and truly upon us, and materials for learning and teaching are available....for free. 

                                                 (The lights are on but there's nobody home )

A pretty good first session. Some interesting thoughts on leadership and school improvement, however, whilst Louise's project moves one school at a time onto the agenda as one way forward, as ever, the practical application of the words and presentations needs sound and thoughtful political leadership as well. It would have been good to hear from the Government  minister responsible for South African Education,  however, the lack of any representation from this quarter was particularly notable this morning.

One big gripe though...there was no free wifi available to delegates. Quite frankly, in this day and age for an international conference  not to have a free wifi facility is nothing short of appalling!. Perhaps there would have been higher level of outward engagement through social media if this had been the case, because out of over a hundred delegates in the hall, less than ten percent were using their own 3G for live tweeting. 

 If African Education Week wants to take it's place amongst the leading education conferences of the world, this glaring omission really must be rectified for next year's event.