The EdHub is the innovation unit within the NECT with an explicit mandate to promote and support innovation in education. It aims to coordinate innovation for 21st Century education so that it can impact, at scale, the public basic education system in South Africa and ultimately improve education outcomes and quality of life for all.
A recently initiated channel within the EdHub is the establishment of the ‘21st Century Schools Sandbox’ initiative that intends to set up a laboratory for 21st Century schooling models in the public sector, where various innovative models for teaching and learning can be trialled. Through the implementation of this project, a body of evidence will be gathered to assist in proving the case for the integration of 21st Century teaching and learning practices into the South African public schooling system.
Godwin Khosa, CEO of the NECT, stated: “The CCR/NECT Partnership is ambitious yet practical, as we are playing in the transformation and not the improvement space; but we will keep focused on trialling and testing while feeding key findings into the basic education sector throughout the process”.
Charles Fadel, founder of the CCR, added: “We are delighted to advise and assist the NECT with its Edhub/Sandbox initiatives to serve as a model for South African schools. The attachment to 21st Century Competencies of Skills, Character and Meta-Learning is both refreshing and leading edge”.
The NECT is an organisation dedicated to strengthening partnerships between government, business, labour and civil society to achieve South Africa’s national goals for basic education – as detailed in Chapter 9 of the National Development Plan 2030. It strives both to support and influence the agenda to reform education through a variety of capacity-building interventions, monitoring and evaluation, research, and advocacy. With cross-sectoral governance spanning government, business, labour & civil society, the NECT is uniquely positioned to identify, enable and fast-track change in the basic education system.
The CCR is a non-profit global organization dedicated to improving Education and openly propagating its recommendations and frameworks on a worldwide basis, via answering this question: “What should students learn for the 21st Century?”. The CCR brings together international organizations, jurisdictions, academic institutions, corporations, and non-profit organizations including foundations. It focuses on designing and propagating new curricula and assessments.
