About School Refinery
“Being responsive to each child’s needs ensures that we are making schools better places.”

Meet Shakira Akabor
School Refinery is the brainchild of Shakira Akabor.
Shakira is an academic tutor and PhD candidate at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Since 2003 she has been teaching in a mainstream classroom at primary school level. She is especially passionate about the ways in which we can include rather than exclude children in our classrooms, particularly those learners with different learning needs. Shakira is the host of School’s Out, an ITV Networks educational programme which airs on Saturday mornings at 10 am, DStv channel 347.
Shakira lives in Pretoria with her husband, 3 children and 2 cats.
Below is a sneak peek into Shakira’s current doctoral study entitled The intention and impact of visible rewards as school-wide practice at two Gauteng high schools.
