Sustainable Education in South Africa: The SPARK Model

• In Event: Educational technology in sub-Saharan Africa: toward access, innovation and equality of learning opportunities

Proposal

Economist William Baumol theorizes that, unlike the manufacturing sector, service industries such as education, health and the arts, there is much less scope for productivity and sustainability. He argues that in the manufacturing sector, as cost of labor and product rise due to inflation, business owners introduce increasingly advanced technologies to improve cost efficiencies. However, in industries such as education, because service is the primary means of production, there are limited opportunities to leverage technologies that decrease the need for service. For example, in the car industry (manufacturing), when costs rise due to inflation, engineers work to improve the productivity of car manufacturing so that manufacturing a car requires fewer people. On the other hand, in education (service), as labor costs rise, schools will still require roughly the same number of teachers per pupil in a school. Therefore, the costs of the costs of production continue to rise as productivity lags in progress, and are inevitably more difficult to sustain regardless of the financial model applied.
SPARK Schools is a network of affordable independent schools implementing blended and personalized learning for students in South Africa. SPARK has developed and implemented a model that challenges Baumol’s Law by leveraging technology, personalized instruction and character development to provide education at the same cost as South African government schools. Since 2013, SPARK has grown to 15 self-sustaining schools and will be expand to 21 schools in 2019.
This panel presentation will discuss the SPARK model and how SPARK leverages technology to personalize learning, promote rigor and promote digital citizenship and character development to ensure that SPARK graduates will be positive contributors to South Africa.

Author

• Jocelyn Logan-Friend, SPARK Schools