Real school change starts with the people who lead it.
We develop the whole leadership team, not the principal alone, so the school is led by a group strong enough to carry its own change. Deep, sustained work over many months, in the under-served South African schools that need it most.
- Nearly 20 years
- 45+ under-served schools
- 4 WCED districts
- independently evaluated
South Africa’s education crisis is a leadership crisis.
81%
of South Africa’s Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning, the lowest of fifty-seven education systems.
PIRLS 2021
Each mark is one Grade 4 learner in a hundred.
The shortfall is rarely a lack of money or effort: spending per learner has become far more equitable, yet outcomes have not kept pace.
What holds schools back is the conditions around them
- Districts and schools pulling in different directions
- Leaders buried under competing initiatives
- Routines that react rather than lead
Each of these is a leadership problem rather than a curriculum or infrastructure one. Strengthen the leadership system, and capable leaders can turn intention into sustained action. That is where we work.
45+
Schools partnered with
Nearly20
Years operating
32,000+
Learners reached
Independent evaluation, Tshwane University of Technology, 2024: leadership efficacy across the cohort rose from 3.4 to 4.2 on a five-point scale. Read the evidence
We choose depth over reach: a year or more with every school, our people on-site and in person. The learners are reached because the leadership held.
Dinaledi was founded in 2007 by coaches and educators testing one question: could real coaching work in Cape Flats schools? Nearly twenty years on, the answer is built for this context, not imported into it.
Read our full storyA school sits inside a system. We work the whole of it.
Lasting change requires alignment across every level of that system, from provincial policy down to the classroom, and it holds only when the people who lead the school are working as a team.
The System
Provincial policy sets the conditions for everything
The Provincial Education Department, civil society organisations, and funders create the enabling environment: the conditions a school is given, or left without. Dinaledi works to align with provincial priorities and build relationships that give school-level change long-term durability.
- Provincial Dept
- Civil Society
- Funders
The work moves inward
Funders & partners who back the work.
These organisations have made the work possible.
“Their commitment to educational transformation, particularly in our most challenged schools, is deeply appreciated and strongly endorsed.”