In The News

In Search of the Extraordinary

Fourteen schools from around South Africa convened at DCS this week to define, discuss, and drive a restless pursuit for the extraordinary. These schools form the South African Extraordinary Schools Coalition (SAESC), a body that seeks to "implement necessary innovative educational change to deal with ongoing educational dysfunction" in South Africa. The SAESC believes access to high quality education—particularly to those marginalized by poverty—is critical to the socioeconomic transformation of the country.

 DCS hosted the first SAESC meeting of 2012, which placed an intense focus on developing a tool to evaluate South African schools using peer review. As part of this process, coalition members visited DCS classrooms to practise educator assessment. DCS also presented its Orphans and Vulnerable Children Programme as a successful model of extraordinary excellence, with over 100 orphaned and vulnerable learners matriculating in the past decade. Finally, the coalition also took time to refine, and define areas for evaluation including a schools' ability to respond to extraordinary human need, and produce extraordinary results with learners coming from diverse backgrounds.
For more information on the SAESC visit www.bridge.org.za.