The Politics and Governance of Basic Education

• Part I: Framing the Issues


• 1: Brian Levy: Improving basic education - the governance challenge


• 2: Luis Crouch and Ursula Hoadley: The transformation of South Africa's system of basic education


• 3: Robert Cameron and Vinothan Naidoo: Education policymaking at national level - the politics of multiple principals


• Part II: Provincial Governance and Politics of Education


• 4: Robert Cameron and Brian Levy: Provincial governance of education - the Western Cape experience


• 5: Zukiswa Kota, Monica Hendricks, Eric Matambo, and Vinothan Naidoo: Provincial governance of education - the Eastern Cape experience


• 6: Gabrielle Wills, Debra Shepherd, and Janeli Kotze: Explaining the Western Cape performance paradox: an econometric analysis


• 7: Brian Levy, Robert Cameron, and Vinothan Naidoo: Context and capability: A tale of two bureaucracies


• Part III: Horizontal Governance


• 8: Ursula Hoadley, Brian Levy, Lawule Shumane, and Shelly Wilburn: Case studies of school-level governance dynamics in the Western Cape


• 9: Brian Levy and Lawule Shumane: Case studies of school-level governance dynamics in the Eastern Cape


• 10: Brian Levy: "All for education" - Meeting the governance challenge

Brian Levy is Professor of the Practice of International Development, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC and Academic Director, Graduate School of Development Policy and Practice, University of Cape Town. He worked at the World Bank from 1989 to 2012. His books include Working with the Grain: Integrating Governance and Growth in Development Strategies (Oxford University Press, 2014) and Building State Capacity in Africa (World Bank Institute, 2004).


Robert Cameron is Professor of Public Administration in the Department of Political Studies, University of Cape Town. He has published around ninety journal articles and book chapters on local government, public administration and public service reform. He is a Senior Fellow at the Global Cities Institute, University of Toronto, and was a member of the South African Municipal Demarcation Board (1999-2004) which demarcated non-racial local government boundaries for the democratic South Africa.

Ursula Hoadley is Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Cape Town. Her extensive published research explores the relation between education and social stratification and the differential social and academic outcomes engendered through educational processes, with a focus on pedagogy, curriculum, and school organization at the primary level, Ursula participates in multiple professional education associations, and boards, including South Africa's Ministerial Review Committee of 2009 which led to the revision of the outcomes-based national curriculum. She is the author of Pedagogy in poverty: 20 years of curriculum reform in South Africa (Routledge, 2017).


Vinothan Naidoo is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Studies, University of Cape Town. His research spans institutional transformation and public sector reform, policy co-ordination and implementation, political-administrative relations, and inter-governmental relations. Recent