South Africa is one of just three countries (along with China and New Zealand) from the 20 studied that stand out in terms of the comprehensiveness of their policies to improve the delivery of education while enacting a range of policies to promote the overall wellbeing of students. These include ensuring that the health needs of students are met, addressing bullying in schools, and promoting greater engagement with families.
Economist Impact’s Learning Ecosystems Framework, commissioned by the Jacobs Foundation, offers a tool to understand the enabling factors of effective learning ecosystems that can provide new opportunities to benefit children’s learning and wellbeing.
The framework has been applied to 20 countries covering almost 50% of the world’s children. The findings are based on a survey conducted by Economist Impact of 2 000 teachers and young people (aged 18–20), and supplemented by additional data and desk-based research.
Amid renewed momentum to ‘reimagine education’, after the Covid-19 pandemic impacted 1,6-billion learners around the world, this research aims to encourage policymakers to consider education beyond the classroom.
This framework, the first of its kind, provides a diagnostic tool for understanding the strengths of different environments – the school, the home, and the wider community – that together contribute to young people’s learning and wellbeing.
Consisting of almost 200 indicators and sub-indicators, identified based on interviews with over 20 experts, and a review of more than 70 sources of literature, it assesses the key factors that enable learning ecosystems to develop and thrive. It offers countries a way to measure how their own learning ecosystems are performing – and how to develop them further.
The framework was tested and applied to 20 diverse countries covering 50% of the world’s children, based on a survey of 1 000 teachers and 1 000 young people (aged 18-20) and additional data and desk-based research.
The report highlights South Africa for its approach to environmental education. Through the application of its Eco-Schools programme, more than 50% of the content in selected subjects is environmental in nature.
The research assesses different learning environments (the home, the school and the community) against indicators relating to their public policy, resources, infrastructure, learning facilitator capabilities and relationships and activities. Among key findings of the research, South Africa scores particularly well in terms of its school environment.
The study also showed that education policy is evolving beyond traditional academics, and the vast majority of countries studied (more than 80%) are expanding curricula to essential 21st century competences, like digital skills, creativity, critical thinking, global citizenship, collaboration and sustainability.
South Africa is one of 12 countries out of the 20 surveyed which has expanded its national curricula for education to include a broader range of new skills for young people – ICT and digital literacy, breadth of skills, global citizenship education, education for sustainable development, and sexuality education. Its “education plans, policies and curricula reflect growing consideration for student wellbeing, moving beyond the traditional focus on academia to encompass a wider set of skills and competencies.”
Key global findings from the 20-country survey of teachers and young people, supplemented by additional data and desk-based research:
- Most teachers polled (70%) feel encouraged by their school to personalise instruction to the needs of individual students, but only 50% report they have adequate time to spend with each pupil.
- Although four in five teachers see the value of collaborating with external partners beyond the school, less than 20% report that their school is actively engaging with external institutions and actors.
- On average, one in five young people (18%) do not engage in any form of community-based or after-school activity, including extracurricular activities, summer learning programmes, work-based learning, environmental protection activities, community service activities and cultural activities. These findings vary substantially across countries, from only 2% not engaging in such activities in China, to 32% in the UK.
- Across the countries studied, open and green spaces are available to approximately 60% of the population, according to UN Habitat data. However, only a third of young people report easy access to green spaces, play facilities and pedestrian spaces in their communities growing up.
- 33% of young people felt that their family’s finances prevented them from accessing education resources, such as educational books, while 30% reported an interruption to participation in school activities.
Fabio Segura and Simon Sommer, co-CEOs of the Jacobs Foundation, comment: “We hope that this Learning Ecosystems Framework will help countries understand how well their learning ecosystems are performing and how they can be supported to further evolve. But this framework is only the first step in a long process. We are calling on governments to collect and share more data and evidence on how different environments contribute to students’ learning and wellbeing. Only then will we be able to ensure that all children can realize their full learning potential and thrive.”