Jonathan Jansen’s Worth the Fight — Fixing failure in SA schools

Professor Jonathan Jansen is probably the best-known public intellectual in South Africa. His newspaper columns, books and public engagements are relevant and challenging. So, when he decides to work alongside a principal on the Cape Flats to turn around a school, people take note.

His original goal wasn’t to write a book, but to work alongside the principal to turn around the academic results of a school that got the Western Cape’s lowest pass rate in the 2023 National Senior Certificate examinations. However, he soon realised two things: his most cherished assumptions about teaching, learning and leading and managing working-class schools were seriously flawed, and the story about how and why change happened at this school had to be widely shared.

Jansen’s experience has significant implications for the model of teacher education at public universities that prepare teachers for the profession. There is now evidence that academic teachers, long removed from the classroom, are perpetuating the inequality and ineffectiveness so prevalent in primary and high schools throughout South Africa.

“Sending professors back to school” became a major research project that flowed from these observations, and some of his colleagues have already changed the ways in which they prepare future teachers.

His second realisation concerned the wise use of resources. Investing extensive personal, public and private resources in one school without benefiting thousands of high schools countrywide could raise legitimate questions about the limited scope and value of a singular intervention.

Hence, a book that captures the story of school turnaround would be an efficient way to share the lessons from this work.

Most of Cherry High School’s* children come from nearby Steenberg and Retreat, relatively stable areas, or from across the M5 freeway, where the ironically named flats of Lavender Hill, Seawinds and Hillview are cramped, dilapidated, and rarely painted. Curious to see where they lived, Jansen drove students home and recalled that Lavender Hill was better kept and more respectable in the 1980s.

In Worth the Fight, Jansen presents a scholarly text in an accessible format so that policymakers and practitioners can read, enjoy and act on it. However, “the final chapter succumbs to academic convention (theory, literature, analysis) for education students and researchers”. The book is engaging.

Another planet

Jansen felt as if he had landed on another planet when he first stepped into a prefabricated classroom at Cherry High: “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…”

Driven by instinct, the social scientist in Jansen wanted to analyse why a teacher cannot command basic attention. This tension sparked a 22-month research journey using “live data” to theorise about dysfunction in poor schools. He had to rethink how such dysfunction is created, sustained and potentially fixed.

The various chapters move outwards from what Jansen saw walking into a classroom, through to the systemic, results-based crisis facing the school and then to what genuine change looked like.

Jansen returned to teaching a Grade 9 science class, where he saw how much preparation, discernment and humility teaching working-class teenagers demands.

He argues that culture, not strategy, is usually what makes or breaks reform: schools with unpredictable, swinging results year on year are really signalling an unstable institutional culture that no single policy can fix.

Learning and living

A recurring theme in the book is the inseparability of learning from living. He argues that academic turnaround can’t be separated from the realities (poverty, trauma, family instability) that students and teachers carry into the school each day.

Jansen’s central claims about what drove the turnaround are that the quality and composition of the leadership team matter more than seniority or political connection; a deliberate change strategy matters; co­­operative relationships with the education department matter; and, finally, gradually bringing parents and alumni into the school’s life matters.

He makes it clear that no single intervention model is a magic bullet. Cherry High succeeded through the convergence of sustained personal investment, mobilised resources and committed local leadership.

In his analysis, Jansen argues that schools need practical measures to address how life outside the classroom disrupts learning:

Shorten the school day. A seven-hour day in poorly ventilated classrooms leads to lost productivity in the final stretch. He suggests shorter days and multiple short breaks, paired with incentive systems that frame improvement as a game.

Feed students properly. Good food visibly changes attention spans and mood.

Establish consistent routines. Predictable practices (arrival times, greetings, dress) stabilise classrooms, but only work if applied by most of the teachers.

Practise a “pedagogy of love”. Not sentimentality, but consistent, committed presence: teachers who show up prepared and engaged, principals who walk the grounds, alumni mentorship, counselling networks and public recognition of student progress rather than public shaming.

Care for teachers’ wellbeing. Jansen stresses that teacher welfare and student learning are inseparable.

Fix basic infrastructure. Working-class schools have chronic backlogs such as overcrowded prefab classrooms, no libraries or labs, and unreliable WiFi.

Reframe subject teaching. Rather than rigidly following pacing guides, teachers should feel free to reinforce earlier concepts and connect lessons to students’ everyday lives.

Introduce selectivity. A working-class school can’t turn around if it becomes a dumping ground for every struggling learner rejected by other schools. He argues for some sifting at Grade 8 intake, favouring students with reasonable academic prospects and behaviour, and ­sharing difficult cases across neighbourhood schools.

Model exemplarity. Teachers and leaders must embody the standards they demand, such as punctuality, fairness and visible passion for their subject.

The message he ends with is that when school leaders and teachers visibly show up for students, students show up too, and even in the most difficult working-class contexts, this is a fight worth having. DM

* Not its real name.

Dr Mark Potterton is the principal of Immaculata Secondary School in Soweto, and director of the Three2Six Refugee Children’s Education Project.

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.