Engaging Stakeholders to Set Priorities for Education Reform in South Africa
Social Innovation Lab in South Africa on Education and Technology
How might we harness advances in information and communication technology to improve education in South Africa?
Challenge
Solution
Depending on your role in the education system – teacher, student, parent, future employer – your ideas may differ widely. The Government of South Africa needed a way to hear a lot of perspectives in a short amount of time, and bring those ideas together to inform strategic planning. To do this, they created a “Challenge Scoping Lab” with support from the World Bank and GKI. Inspired by Malaysia’s “Big Fast Results” initiative, the effort was designed to collectively prioritize education challenges based on the perspective of key communities: those who use the education system (e.g., students, parents) and those who implement education programs (e.g., teachers, administrators, technology developers, etc.). GKI designers constructed the Lab experience to maximize participants’ time spent with users to understand their perspectives. Lab participants generated challenge ideas that built off those user insights. Participants praised the easy-to-follow methodology and participatory approaches used. The Lab prioritized 46 challenge ideas that served as a starting point for a subsequent phase of strategic planning: envisioning possible reforms and interventions to address those needs.
Results / Outcomes
- Complete Lab process credited with providing South Africa with clear strategic priorities that elicited buy-in from the Office of the President and guide government investment
- Engaged 40 education stakeholders in a multi-week “Challenge Scoping Lab” process
- Interviewed 30+ students, teachers, administrators, and other key education actors
- Developed 46 starting challenges to be used by a subsequent policy development lab
Resources
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South Africa ICT in Education Lab Report (PDF)
South Africa ICT in Education Challenge Scoping Lab Report
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A Primer on Social Innovation Labs (PDF)
Introducing Social Innovation Labs, what they are, what they offer, and how GKI builds social innovation labs to unleash transformational innovation (PDF)