---
title: "Worth the Fight: The story behind how Jonathan Jansen revived a failing school"
description: "The latest book from Distinguished Professor of Education Jonathan Jansen is part memoir and part case study, examining what it takes to turn around a working-class school – and South Africa’s education system."
type: "NewsArticle"
publisher: "Daily Maverick"
site: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za"
section: "BOOK EXCERPT"
author: "Jonathan Jansen"
author_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/jonathan-jansen/"
canonical_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-08-05-worth-the-fight-the-story-behind-how-jonathan-jansen-revived-a-failing-school/"
published: "2026-08-05T07:00:00"
lang: "en-ZA"
word_count: 1529
---

# Worth the Fight: The story behind how Jonathan Jansen revived a failing school

> The latest book from Distinguished Professor of Education Jonathan Jansen is part memoir and part case study, examining what it takes to turn around a working-class school – and South Africa’s education system.

By Jonathan Jansen · Published 5 August 2026, 09:00 SAST

## Key points
- Jonathan Jansen’s new book interweaves memoir and case study, sharing his efforts to revive a local school, notorious for the lowest matric pass rate in the Western Cape.
- The author recounts chaos in classrooms, revealing systemic failures that have allowed the school to decline, prompting a personal and professional reckoning.
- Jansen’s hands-on involvement highlights the stark realities faced by working-class children, inspiring him to rethink educational theories in the pursuit of meaningful change.
- Set for publication on 7 August, Worth the Fight reveals a powerful commitment to education reform.

## Content

After learning that a local school recorded the worst matric results in the Western Cape in 2023, Jonathan Jansen signed up to help out. With his characteristic warmth and insight, Jansen takes readers inside chaotic classrooms as he works alongside teachers to reverse years of decline. Here is an extract.

\*\*\*

*Author’s note: Cherry High School is used as a pseudonym, accepting that those who know my work and come from this part of South Africa might know the school’s real name. A considered effort has been made not to speak about students, staff or parents in negative ways. Instead, the focus is on how social systems and government policies fail working-class schools and those who inhabit these important public institutions.*

When I first stepped into a prefabricated classroom at Cherry High, it felt as if I had landed on another planet. A boy in the Grade 9 class was reclining with both feet on his desk. The teacher was teaching. Two girls left the classroom for a walk. The teacher continued to teach. Another girl arrived at the door and stood there as if she was making up her mind whether to stay or stroll back home. The teacher laboured on. The noise was non-stop as groups of students around the classroom enjoyed the Monday morning banter. The teacher valiantly raised his voice in an attempt to be heard above the cacophony.

Outside the classroom, a groundsman approached me. “Look over there, sir,” he said in Afrikaans, directing my attention to the drainpipe running from the upper staircase to the ground floor of the school’s first block. Deciding the two stairwells were too far away, a boy was sliding down the drainpipe. I stared in horror. It was not the strongest of structures and the young man could fall and break his neck. But what struck me was how normal this all seemed.

I was disoriented. Yes, I had worked in tough schools as a high school biology teacher decades earlier. At my first school, in Vredenburg on the west coast of South Africa, the students were not that much older than me and instilling discipline among young adults was tough. At my second school, in District Six in Cape Town, there were similar challenges but for the most part they were manageable. In scale and intensity, what I now saw was a completely different kettle of fish.

The noise felt overwhelming. Students could be seen outside the doors of several classrooms, sent there by teachers dealing with serial disrupters. The number of students drifting outside class during lessons was stupefying. A steady stream of latecomers strolled onto the school grounds. I went home that day overwhelmed with emotion. It was not the chaos that disturbed me. It was that nobody seemed to care.

I rose earlier than usual on the second morning, closed the door of my study and felt the tears run down my cheeks. Why was I so upset? It was not so much the discord and chaos at the school, I thought. What really disturbed me was that the interlocking systems of school and society had failed these mainly working-class children – and that nobody seemed to notice.

With an instinct for orderliness, the teacher in me wanted to intervene on the spot. Decades ago, in my first teaching post, I was called *tier*(Afrikaans for tiger) for my determination to bring order in my classroom and those of colleagues who asked for help. On the other hand, the social scientist in me wanted to grasp more deeply why this teacher simply could not call his class to attention so they could learn something... anything. Already I sensed the possibilities of “live data”, which over the next 22 months would provide me with a theory of school dysfunction in working-class communities.

But little did I know how the chaos in this and several other classrooms would send me back to the drawing board in a fresh attempt to understand how dysfunction is produced and sustained in our poorest schools – and how it can be addressed.

\*\*\*

It was all over the news in early 2024. Out of 454 high schools in the Western Cape, Cherry High had achieved the lowest pass rate – 35.9% – in the 2023 matric exams, the old name for the National Senior Certificate (NSC). For those who knew Cherry, this was the lowest point in the history of a school once highly regarded for its academic standing and activist teachers. Just eight years earlier, 88% of students had passed matric. Something had gone horribly wrong.

I remember emotions of shock and sadness when it dawned on me that Cherry was a short walk from the family home where I grew up. But my first reaction was “no, I can’t take on another project”. In my 18-hour day there was far too much research to be done, postgraduate students to be supervised, books to be written, academics to be mentored and school development projects to be monitored.

But this was Cherry. I could hear my late mother’s voice rattling my conscience: “Charity begins at home.” I had worked on school turnaround projects in all nine provinces, though not so much in the one that raised me. So I called the head of education in the Western Cape and made the offer: I am ready and willing to volunteer at Cherry and help to turn the school around. You do not have to pay me a cent; my university already covers my salary.

Days later, I started work. It did not occur to me at the time that this would be an all-consuming job that would drain every ounce of energy from my body. Nor did I realise it would be one of the most fulfilling commitments I had ever made – an assignment that would transform me deeply as a person, reset my guiding norms as a professional, and topple my most cherished academic theories about school and society.

\*\*\*

I went to school early and established what would become a trend. I left home at about 6.30am and arrived at the gate around 6.55. It was dark in winter and could be rainy for weeks on end. One teacher’s car was already in the parking lot, both of us arriving early to avoid the build-up in traffic from our side of the southern suburbs.

My wife Grace would make hot chocolate for the eight to 12 students who were already at school by the time I arrived. Some came from as far as Khayelitsha and Goodwood and were dropped off by parents on their way to work. Others took taxis from deep inside dangerous areas such as Overcome Heights in Capricorn or Hillview in Lavender Hill. One boy rode a small bicycle without lights or reflectors; a bike shop in Claremont gave me the reflectors for free when they heard the boy’s story. I learnt a lot about the school by talking to this group in the early hours before non-teaching staff opened the inner gates, disarmed the alarm in the administration block and switched on the lights.

At first, these early arrivals did not say much to me; in fact, they barely greeted. But over the weeks that followed and as the hot chocolate did its warming work, they shared their stories. One girl came from Malawi for her schooling in South Africa, another from Zimbabwe. Arriving at school so early was mainly to fall in line with parents’ schedules. This group seemed to have more-intact families, attended school more regularly than others, and were well dressed in the school uniform.

On the second day I arrived even earlier and asked the security guard to open the inner gate. In the darkness I roamed around the four main blocks of the school, trying to gain a sense of space and place. On one of the two stairwells I saw more condoms than I had seen on university campuses. The lewd language on the metal frames of the classroom doors had its intended effect: shock and disgust. Some doors had long lost their handles, and out of the holes stuck rough pieces of iron, presumably to be twisted by people wanting to enter.

I entered the principal’s office and said, “Ma’am, you have a dysfunctional school”. I watched her rock back slightly in her chair. Dysfunctional? “Yes, come and take a walk with me.” She saw what I saw, and the discomfort registered on her face. But in the eyes of this still newish principal of less than a year, then and ever since, was a determination and passion to change her school.

We found the boy who had brought boxes of condoms to school. I did not at first believe his explanation: they were used to polish shoes. After several others confirmed his story, I believed the young man and offered to bring him real shoe polish. “What a waste of a condom,” I whispered to one of the teachers. **DM**

*[Worth the Fight by Jonathan Jansen](https://exclusivebooks.co.za/products/9781776196104?_pos=47&_sid=aca6cbdd2&_ss=r) will be published by Jonathan Ball Publishers on 7 August. It is available at a retail price of around R330.*