Changing Class: Education and Social Change in Post-Apartheid South Africa provides a compelling analysis of key developments in this dramatic era of change in South Africa. One of the few books to examine the broad sweep of educational change in the first decade of democracy, its authors review everything from spending patterns, decentralisation, school integration and private schooling to language policy, curriculum and assessment, teacher education, teacher unions, as well as early childhood education, youth development and adult education.

A mix of leading scholars and exciting new writers, the authors show how closely the shape of education is interwoven with that of society. The big picture that emerges is that, even as the overall intention of post-apartheid policy-makers has been to reconcile the interests of unequal and competing social classes and races, the interests of a new, deracialised middle class have come to dominate in formal education. This is despite the strengthening of teacher unions and the fact that movements in adult education and related spheres are re-emerging with a revitalised emancipatory agenda.