Navigating the Free Basic Education Landscape, Southern Africa

The universal education agenda is to make education accessible, affordable, inclusive, and equitable to the destitute. Sedulous efforts are diligently carried out to the realization of this vision to ameliorate individuals academically and socially while meliorating emotional developmental needs. As need be, without exception, it is exigent for everyone to be erudite. For this to happen, it had to start from the ground up, achievable with the exordium of free basic education (FBE) with no child left behind policy maugre socio-economic background. This will be a paradigm shift against educational discrimination and inequalities, serving as a means for all to acquire knowledgeable skills and break the cycle of the underprivileged not having admittance. The study ferrets out insights on FBE from 17 Eswatini public primary educational communities, the study identified its benefits, trammels, impact on education, and panaceas. The empirical pragmatic procedure utilized the mixed method to present factual outcomes that can be generalized. Data was gathered from 70 educators (principals, in-service, and pre-service) and 15 learners by convenience, purposive, and referral approaches through surveys, distributed in person and virtually. Educators got the drift and thus had synchronized responses on the merits of free education as a benefact to the marginalized. The proem of FBE is menaced by innumerable impediments, a variety of topics are indexed from the visited schools, ranging from a population explosion of learners disproportionate to teaching-learning facilities/resources, educators’ deficit in attending to individualized learner needs, inadequate educational coaches, declined learner discipline, and English lingo as a barrier to education. Educators’ and learners’ perceptions of automatic promotional policy detrimental to quality education and the new curriculum are sought. FBE is a noble vision, worthy of achieving its goals, it is anticipated that the research would highlight and elucidate patterns of educational disadvantage in FBE for all relevant stakeholders to necessitate reformations to ensure its sustainable success.