Today 1 February 2013, Equal Education (EE) celebrates its fifth birthday. As we mark these five years we more than ever recognise the critical challenges, but we are also newly hopeful. On the one hand education has come to define the national discourse. The nation’s gaze has never before fallen so sharply on an education minister or the Department of Basic Education. The Limpopo textbook crisis, mud schools in the Eastern Cape, school closures in the Western Cape, school disruptions in the Northern Cape and a national school infrastructure crisis have exposed the state of South Africa’s education system. The deep inequality in our schools, and how this reinforces privilege and poverty, has never been so widely recognised. On the other hand small rays of hope have emerged, and been acknowledged, such as the somewhat improved matric results [http://www.equaleducation.
