The school is a partnership between the Gauteng Department of Education and UJ. It is a public school, but also a research/teaching school, a first of its kind in South Africa.
As part of the UJ Institute for Childhood Education (UJICE) the Funda UJabule School serves not only children and families in Soweto, but also the scholarly community. Ground breaking research is conducted in a multifaceted panel inquiry over four years, in which the children’s cognitive ability, their performance in mathematics, their linguistic competence in two languages (either isiZulu and English, or Sesotho and English), their literacy development in two languages, as well as their learning of science are captured in standardised and custom designed instruments.
The school also serves as teaching school for the Foundation Phase Education degree programme in the Faculty of Education. This pre-service foundation phase teacher education programme is researched by the Department of Childhood Education of the University, with Prof Elbie Henning as lead researcher, in a programme that is co-ordinated by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), with European Union sponsorship. The EU/DHET also funds a project lead by the Dean of the Faculty of Education at UJ, Prof Saartjie Gravett, to research this type of school as a required component of teacher education in South Africa.
The photograph shows President Barosso and Commissioner Piebalg from the EU, Prof Anhina Parekh, Deputy Vice Chancellor UJ, Prof Saartjie Gravett (Dean of Education), Dr Diane Parker from the Department of Higher Education, UJ staff and students and some of the staff and children at Funda UJabule.