SPARK Soweto, an independent, partially government-funded kindergarten and primary school in Johannesburg, South Africa, has emerged winner of the World’s Best School Prize for Community Collaboration 2023.
SPARK Soweto was chosen as the winner of the World’s Best School Prize for Community Collaboration 2023 from among the Top 3 finalists for the Prize, which also included William Henry Burkhart Elementary in the US and Escola Municipal Professor Edson Pisani in Brazil.
The school and all of its fellow finalists will share their best practices to help others replicate their work through School Transformation Toolkits and events on the T4 Communities app.
The five World’s Best School Prizes, founded last year by T4 Education in collaboration with Accenture, American Express, and the Lemann Foundation, are the world’s most prestigious education prizes and this year’s winners share an award of $250,000.
Other winners included: Institución Educativa Municipal Montessori sede San Francisco in Colombia, which won the World’s Best School Prize for Environmental Action; The Riverside School in India won the World’s Best School Prize for Innovation; The Max Rayne Hand in Hand Jerusalem School won the World’s Best School Prize for Overcoming Adversity; “And EEMTI Joaquim Bastos Gonçalves in Brazil won the World’s Best School Prize for Supporting Healthy Lives.
These winners were chosen by an expert Judging Academy.
Meanwhile, Government Girls Day Secondary School, Runjin Sambo, a government school in Sokoto, Nigeria, which has transformed the lives of thousands of teenage girls through its Menstrual Hygiene programme, made the Top 10 shortlist for the World’s Best School Prize for Overcoming Adversity.
