Despite two-and-a-half decades of black majority rule after 1994, much of South African higher education in the area of humanities continues to embrace European models and paradigms. This is despite concepts such as Africanisation, indigenisation and decolonisation of the curriculum having become buzzwords, especially after the #MustFall campaigns, student-led protests from 2015.

This book argues that, beyond the use of internally constructed strategies to foster curriculum transformation in South Africa, it is important to draw lessons from the curriculum transformation efforts of other African countries and African-American studies in the United States (US).

The end of colonialism in Africa from the 1950s marked the most important era in curriculum transformation efforts in African higher education, evident in the rise of leading decolonial schools: the Ibadan School of History, the Dar es Salaam School of Political Economy and the Dakar School of Culture. These centres used rigorous research methods such as nationalist historiography and oral sources to challenge Eurocentric epistemologies. African-American studies emerged in the US from the 1920s to debunk notions of white superiority and challenge racist ideas and structures in international relations. The two important schools of this scholarship were the Atlanta School of Sociology and the Howard School of International Affairs.

Over 60 million children of primary-school age, mostly in Africa and Asia, are not in school. More then 250 million are in school but are not experiencing meaningful learning.

In South Africa, school is compulsory for children aged seven to 15, where they are expected to learn core skills – reading, writing and arithmetic – and improve their chances of future employment. But for some, schools are places of persistent failure, of humiliation, of boredom and lack of progress.

Finding Place and Keeping Pace: Exploring meaningful and equitable learning in South African schools is about getting access to and completing a full cycle of good-quality basic education. The contributors span a range of methodologies that include policy analysis, classroom observation and learner assessment, bringing together a rich set of studies that explore a pattern of exclusion from meaningful learning by South African schoolchildren. In particular, they look at schoolchildren who attend school regularly, but are not learning due to inadequate facilities, indifferent teachers and socio-economic factors. They are at risk of either dropping out or leaving school with limited resources.

Within the country, access to schooling remains uneven across and within provinces, and between different communities, with poverty, race and location being major factors. Physical access is just the first hurdle – once through the school gates it is expected that children will be provided with knowledge and values that will allow them to function in the economic and social life of the country. However, this is not the general case – children may be at school but without accessing education.

The authors identify several patterns of exclusion, including different forms of marginalisation, age-inappropriate enrolments, and the fact that school choice, voice and quality remain restricted. They also make policy recommendations, which include improving the quality of teachers and teaching, enhancing parental and community involvement, and clarifying the Language-in-Education policy.

In the face of the continuing national tragedy of the inequality, poverty and unemployment which have triggered rising working-class discontent around the country, the ANC announced a 'second phase' of the 'national democratic revolution' to deal with the challenges. Ironically, the ANC post-Mangaung has resolved to preserve the core tenets of the minerals-energy-financial complex that defined racial capitalism - while at the same time ratcheting up the revolutionary rhetoric to keep the working class and marginalised onside. If the 'first phase' was a tragedy of the unmet expectations of the majority, is the 'second phase' likely to be a farce? The chapters in this volume are written by experts in their fields and address issues of politics, power and social class; economy, ecology and labour; public policy and social practice; and South Africa beyond its borders. They examine some of these challenges, and indicate that they are as much about the defective content of policies as their poor implementation. The third volume of the New South African Review continues the series by providing in-depth analyses of the key issues facing the country today.