This article aims to complement and contribute to the discussion of increasingly acute pressures facing Southern Africa’s education systems due to migration trends, by placing such pressures within the broader context of instability across Africa and comparing this with other global conflict- and scarcity-driven migration patterns. Historically, during the Cold War —spanning from the end of World War II to the early 1990s— certain states, such as apartheid-era South Africa, Chile under political polarisation culminating in the 1973-1990 dictatorship, and communist Romania, witnessed repressive regimes forcing citizens into exile. In the wake of subsequent and ongoing conflicts elsewhere, these countries have now evolved into becoming recipients of exiles, a role informed by national reconciliation processes. While they share a common thread of exile and migration, their transitions to educational hosting reveal unique challenges rooted in historical legacies, economic conditions, and policy responses. Meanwhile, Mauritius provides a point of comparison, as what has historically been a place of exile increasingly loses educated people.

The accounting curriculum at the school level remains a pertinentpedagogical component in enhancing the throughput and success of learners, which can inevitably contribute to the growth of the field within the country. However, challenges still hinder the successful implementation of the accounting curriculum. This paper explored teachers’ challenges in implementing the accounting curriculum in South African secondary schools, focusing primarily on the Umlazi district of KwaZulu-Natal. Seventeen accounting teachers and five principals from seventeen respective schools were interviewed using a qualitative case study approach. The study found that accounting curriculum implementation in the township school faced several significant challenges. The new curriculum was seen as disorganised, making it difficult for teachers to deliver the content effectively. In addition, teachers lacked the necessary skills and training to teach the new curriculum effectively. Inadequate resources and limited access to technology further exacerbated these issues. Language barriers also pose a challenge, as complex English in textbooks makes it difficult for many non- English speaking learners to understand the subject matter. The study recommends re-training and re-skilling teachers per the new curriculum and improved alignment between secondary schools and the Department of Higher Education to facilitate a smoother student transition. In addition, better teacher supervisory support, resources and technology are needed, along with updated textbooks. The CAPS curriculum review further suggested that accounting should be a standalone subject in Grades 8 and 9.

Neoliberalism absolutises economic and market rationality and foregrounds values that serve the economy's exclusive needs. As a result, it not only alters the aims and objectives of education but also erodes, marginalises and replaces authentic pedagogical and social values with marked values such as individualism, competition, performance, self-interest, self-reliance, accountability, etc. These market values negatively affect school discipline by transforming what it means to be a teacher and a learner. In addition, it also changes the teacher-learner relationships, with both teachers and learners being disengaged from the teaching and learning process. This conceptual paper argues that South Africa's adoption of neoliberal education policies negatively impacted teacher and learner value systems and teacher-learner relationships, resulting in a decay in social values in schools and creating a favourable context for exacerbating ill-discipline in South African schools. It proposes Ubuntu as an ethical and moral framework for restoring teacher-learner relationships and reversing neoliberalism's negative influence on learner discipline in South African schools.

This study investigated principals’ perceptions of their responsibilities in managing technology infrastructure in underresourced public secondary schools within the Tshwane West district, using a public-private partnership (PPP) approach. 2017,the Telkom Foundation initiated the ‘Connected Schools Project’ 2017, which introduced advanced tech-enabled resources and support to enhance technology-driven education in select underresourced public secondary schools in Gauteng’s Tshwane West district. This study explores how school principals interpret their roles in managing this infrastructure and executing these responsibilities within a PPP setting. Public-private partnerships are cooperative ventures between government entities and private sector organisations designed to achieve specific goals that serve the public interest (Robertson, et al., 2012). In the education sector, PPPs involve collaboration between state institutions and private entities to undertake various initiatives to improve education. For this research, PPPs specifically refer to the collaboration between the Telkom Foundation, a private entity and four public secondary schools in Gauteng. This study was grounded in the interpretivist paradigm and adopted a qualitative research approach with a case study design, utilising individual interviews for data collection. The research was conducted across four under-resourced public secondary schools in the Tshwane West education district of Gauteng Province, as well as at the Telkom Foundation office complex and the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) district office. The participants included each school’s principal, the information and communication technology (ICT) coordinator, a Telkom Foundation representative, and a GDE district official responsible for facilitating the partnership, totalling ten participants. Data analysis used an inductive approach to interpret the interview responses. The findings indicated that the principals understood their responsibilities in managing ICT infrastructure within a PPP framework. In doing so, they established effective management structures that streamlined ICT infrastructure oversight. These innovative structures offer a replicable model for principals seeking to effectively manage ICT resources in schools.

Transitioning from school to tertiary education can be daunting and overwhelming, and neither students nor institutions are necessarily prepared for these transitions. Some students may even experience multiple transitions in their academic programmes. This paper focuses on the multiple transition stages during the first year of the medical programme at the University of the Free State (UFS) in South Africa. The study aimed to determine first year undergraduate medical students’ perceptions of the multiple transitions involved in the medical programme. The research was designed as an exploratory qualitative study that used focus group discussions to obtain data. Two focus group discussions were held with 17 first-year undergraduates who had undergone multiple transitions in the first year of the medical programme. Multiple transitional stages were investigated: The first was at the start of the first year (January–-June), then six months later (July–December), and then back to the start of the first year for the second time (January–June of the following year). The analysis exposed three main themes, namely (1) expectations and experiences, (2) emotions, and (3) recommendations. These themes are explained by focusing on the participants’ perceptions and following a linear process for the multiple transition stages. Medical students who went through remediation and re-entered the first-year undergraduate programme reported that, during the initial transition, lecturers and senior students did not provide the ‘big picture’ regarding expectations in the medical programme. Instead, the shared expectations did not match their ‘real’ experiences in the programme. Furthermore, students experienced a range of emotions during the multiple transitions. In conclusion, students are accepted into medical schools such as the UFS but are underprepared for the rigours of the programme and are then exposed to multiple transitions. To ease the students’ transition, medical schools must consider designing support strategies that will enable these students to manage these transitions by attending to ‘soft determinants’, such as expectations and experiences, emotions, and contextually applying the students’ recommendations in setting up such strategies.

The current issue is a unique collection of articles covering school and higher education, and can be divided into three broad themes: higher education, teaching and learning and teacher professional development.

Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) policy frameworks are enacted to establish and maintain equitable and fair conditions for marginalised students. However, marginalised students, specifically refugees and forced migrants, face multiple obstacles when entering higher education (HE). The ability to overcome many of these hindrances rests in the formation and implementation of inclusive policies and good practices at national and institutional levels. However, since little research has hitherto been conducted on how inclusivity informs HE internationalisation policies and practices globally, an attempt was made to explore this notion. A scoping review was conducted to discover how inclusivity informs internationalisation on a global scale regarding policies and practices, along with a specific focus on how inclusivity informs policies and practices for refugees. A total of 35 studies published between 2018 and 2023 were included in this review. The findings illustrate that the Global North still dominates the conversation with little collaboration across the socio-political divide. In addition, the literature shows that globally, very few countries have effectively adopted policies and practices in terms of inclusivity to accommodate displaced students within mainstream internationalisation. In addition, those countries that have adopted policies often present social and administrative challenges for refugees. Consequently, specific sub-areas of policies and practices needing inclusive reform were identified. Finally, articles that explore how institutions have altered their policies and practices to address inclusivity were reviewed. Results revealed an inconsistent approach to and application of inclusive policies and practices within internationalisation in HE. Research on mainstream internationalisation identified limited literature on policy and practice implementation to address the HE needs of forced migrants. Despite a call for inclusive education, policies and practices in HE remain largely theoretical. This article aims to provide a perspective on these issues by discussing the trends and challenges discovered in the literature and making recommendations to potentially address the transformation of contextual spaces for refugees in HE.

The study examines artificial intelligence’s (AI) role in peer-topeer learning and its impact on student engagement, academic performance, and pass rates. The research provided insights into how AI influences student engagement and grades through a mixed-methods approach. The research methodology adopted an interpretivist approach that includes aspects of positivism. The design employs induction using qualitative and quantitative methods. The case study operates at a longitudinal time range to study temporal performance developments. The primary data collection uses analysis of external data. The findings indicate a slight improvement in grades (3-5%), lacking statistical significance (p > 0.05) and a significant level of engagement (95%). This statistic raises questions about the relationship between increased engagement and tangible academic outcomes. Students show enhanced engagement through AI-driven personalised learning pathways and continuous feedback systems. Through predictive AI systems, institutions can immediately identify students facing performance-related challenges. AI peer-to-peer support must become accessible to every student without restricting it to only at-risk students. AI application policies in universities must follow mechanisms that allow adjustment for various student peerlearning environments. Partnership with AI developers remains crucial to integrate technology momentum with teaching targets. All AI peer-support policies need to include ethical criteria to maintain responsible deployment. The results suggest that while AI platforms can complement traditional peer support services, further research is necessary to understand their long-term effects on academic performance and retention. Bottom of Form

This study explored the unfreedom of Grade 10 isiXhosa learners, highlighting the complex language, teaching, and assessment dynamics in Afrikaans classrooms. The study draws on them Capability Approach (CA) of Sen (1999) to assess the unfreedoms of learners in Afrikaans Grade 10 classrooms. It underscores the experiences of isiXhosa learners and the limitations imposed on them. Unfreedoms in CA are those hindrances to people’s or institutions’ capacity or ability to achieve. Although multilingualism is acknowledged globally and in South Africa as an inevitable reality, the limitations for isiXhosa learners in Afrikaans classrooms contradict the opportunities and possibilities in a limited educational space. A qualitative approach and case study design were used, and two Grade 10 classes were used to illustrate the case. The study conducted individual, focused group interviews and questionnaires to explore the experiences and views of isiXhosa learners placed in Grade 10 Afrikaans classrooms. The study revealed unfreedoms (limitations for isiXhosa learners enrolled in Afrikaans classrooms and the contributing factors that compound these unfreedoms to the learners’ ability to achieve educational objectives. Factors such as teachers’ frustrations with isiXhosa learners, lack of support, and teachers’ negative attitudes towards accommodating isiXhosa learners in the classroom were highlighted. Not limited to parental perceptions about the Afrikaans language as a language of opportunity, further constraints the learner’s enrolment choice. The lack of available space in public schools also forces parents to enrol students where there is available space, even if it means putting isiXhosa learners in Afrikaans home language classrooms to achieve access to education. The research recommends a translanguaging intervention model as it presents a promising avenue to address underperformance.

Considering the universality of writing struggles faced by both the students and teachers, it is an unexpected observation to find that there are most likely only a dozen or so systematic reviews on the topic. Among these reviews, none so far have focused on identifying and discussing English writing instructional models. This paper systematically reviewed original research papers on English writing instructional models that were published from 2020 to 2024. Using tools such as Publish and Perish, R Studio and NVivo to review the eligible 86 studies, this study identified 60 instructional models for teaching English writing, 25 of them having been newly developed and proposed in the last five years. The names of every instruction or teaching models that were identified are organized based on ten commonalities that several models share: template-based (6), genre-specific (6), discussion-based (8), ICT-based (10), feedback-based (3), focused on lesson plan (10), integration (5), insight (3), collaboration (6), and country-specific (3). A novelty of this systematic review is that it focused on discussing the writing instructional models and presented them by themes that make them easily comparable and easy-to-use for teachers who are aiming to change and improve the way they teach English writing.