Brian Levy will be giving a talk on his recently released book, The Politics and Governance of Basic Education: A Tale of Two South African Provinces.

Tea and coffee will be available at 16:00, with the talk starting promptly at 16:15, followed by an audience Q&A until 17:30. The event will be hosted by Lant Pritchett, RISE Research Director, Blavatnik School of Government, and Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development.

The talk will be livestreamed and recorded on the Blavatnik School of Government YouTube channel.

About the book

The Politics and Governance of Basic Education: A Tale of Two South African Provinces explores the balance between hierarchical and horizontal institutional arrangements for the public provision of basic education. Using the vivid example of South Africa, a country that had ambitious goals at the outset of its transition from apartheid to democracy, it explores how the interaction of politics and institutions affects educational outcomes. By examining lessons learned from how South Africa failed to achieve many of its goals, it suggests a strategy for making progress which combines practical steps to achieve incremental gains with more transformational efforts to evoke agency - a vision, one might say, not only of 'education for all', but of 'all for education'.

About the author

Brian Levy is Professor of the Practice of International Development at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Academic Director of the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance, University of Cape Town.

This event is co-hosted with the Research on Improving Systems of Education Programme (RISE).