Prof Fumane Portia Khanare has presented at the G20 Gauteng Education Indaba. Image: Supplied

The University of the Western Cape's Professor Fumane Portia Khanare was born and raised in Marquard, outside Ficksburg in the Free State, and knows firsthand the disparities between rural and urban schools. In August, she delivered a keynote speech at the G20 Gauteng Education Indaba, where the Gauteng Education Department invited her to advocate for reframing rural schools' management.

An Associate Professor in Educational Psychology at UWC who specialises in inclusive education and Educational Psychology - specifically Positive Psychology - Prof Khanare focused her G20 presentation on the impact of infrastructure, safety and parental involvement in ensuring a conducive teaching and learning environment.

Beginning with the physical learning environment and safety, Prof Khanare explained: "We can have good teachers, but they need to operate within an enabling environment. Safety is not just physical; it's emotional and psychological. A child must also feel safe enough to explore, engage and take risks. Before a child can hold a pencil or sound out a word, they must feel safe enough to learn." 

According to Prof Khanare, foundational learning doesn't begin with textbooks or pencils, but with a sense of security and trust. Clean toilets, secure gates, and safe playgrounds were just as important as predictability, kindness, and caring relationships in the classroom. These elements, she argued, were the enablers of learning, forming the emotional scaffolding that supported attention, memory, and early language development. "Even if the concept is challenging," she said, "safety triggers learning."

Moving beyond infrastructure, Prof Khanare demonstrated her passion for shifting how educational deficiencies, especially in rural areas, are viewed and addressed. "We must stop trying to urbanise rurality.

Instead, we need to meet people where they are. Rural schools shouldn't be judged by urban standards. Instead, education should be adapted to local realities and resources. In the rural areas, we might not have skipping ropes, but we have something we can use to make one. That's innovation. That's context. The stagnation is also in our mindset, where we want to urbanise the rural. We need to reframe rurality not as a space of lack, but as a space of possibility."

An extract from Prof Fumane Portia Khanare's presentation at the G20 Gauteng Education Indaba

Drawing from her upbringing, she challenged the dominant, deficit-based narrative surrounding rural education: "If a rural area can produce a foundational learning for a professorial craft like myself, then rurality is not a limitation; it's an environment full of potential."

Finally, Prof Khanare strongly advocated for recognising parents, especially in marginalised and rural communities, as active contributors to the learning environment. She challenged the notion that only formally educated parents could support education, pointing out that "clan mothers are the best storytellers," and that storytelling itself is a powerful educational tool. Her asset-based approach reframes parents not as passive participants, but as enablers of learning.

She concluded that many parents feel excluded from schools because of how education is defined, calling for more inclusive, amplifying and emancipatory language that welcomes their involvement and values their lived experience.