About the President's Education Initiative

The President’s Education initiative (PEI) was launched in 1997 with President Mandela’s personal appeal to several foreign heads of government for assistance in developing teacher skills in South Africa.  The research component of the initiative was funded by the Danish International Agency (DANIDA).

 JET, as the Joint Education Trust, was contacted by the National Department of Education and DANIDA to manage the PEI Research Project. Research studies were commissioned the areas of:

• establishing best practices in the teaching of maths, science and English with particular reference to Curriculum 2005
• identifying difficulties in the teaching of large classes, multi-grade classes or multilingual classes and investigating ways of overcoming these
• investigating appropriate ways of implementing whole school development (institutional development)
• investigating the availability and use of learning materials in primary school classrooms

The research and analysis of its implications for education development policy and practice were summarised in a book: Getting Learning Right

Getting Learning Right had an immediate impact and ever since has been instrumental in structuring the debate on how to improve the quality of schooling.

Some of the original research reports can be found in the Resources to download section.