Reflecting on a University Partnership Project in Underprivileged South African Schools

Over many years, universities that offer teacher education programmes have been in partnerships of different kinds with schools. Not only are schools sites of research for faculty members, but student teachers get workplace experience during practicums. In the post-modern world, there is emphasis on amelioration at grassroots level, instead of only at systems level. The sentiment is that school-university partnerships should benefit schools as much as their higher education partners. In this paper, we reflect on the first seven years of a university-school partnership project. The purpose of the partnership was in part to improve the school results of potential students from underprivileged feeder areas towards access to higher education programmes. Looking back, some successes can be claimed, as the relative success of learners in the project schools has improved notably. Still, the project has to find ways to remain financially sustainable, and to expand the project to ECD and primary schools, in particular to improve numeracy and literacy skills of young children