Q: What is your professional background and how did it develop?
I have for years tried to work out where my interest in the early education sector emanates from. There is no profound reason. Having a happy childhood in a secure, working-class family certainly contributed to this interest. My parents, who completed school to Grade 8 and Grade 10, drummed into us the importance of education, education and education. I did very well at primary school but struggled through high school, failing Grade 8 with a dismal report that year on which the principal wrote “Scandalous – Fails”. Subsequently I managed to scrape through Grades nine to 12. Sometime in Grade 12, I decided that I wanted to go to university, which I duly did – and failed my first year, hopelessly, and was denied re-registration at UCT. Because of
