This study quantifies a year’s worth of mathematics learning in South Africa (0.3 standard deviations) and uses this measure to develop empirically-calibrated learning trajectories. Two main findings are, (1) only the top 16% of South African Grade 3 children are performing at an appropriate...

In South Africa, school quality within the public school system is heterogeneous and highly stratified along race, socio-economic status and geographic location. Because of the lingering effect of racial segregation, schools which historically served the white minority and accordingly received a...

Primary school mathematics teachers should, at the most basic level, have mastery of the content knowledge that they are required to teach. In this paper we test empirically whether this is the case by analyzing the South African SACMEQ 2007 mathematics teacher test data which tested 401 grade 6...

In this paper we question the existing practice of reporting enrolment statistics that ignore quality, but also quality-statistics that ignore enrolment differentials. The extant literature on education in Africa is bifurcated in that reports focus either on the quality of education or on access...

For many children around the world, access to higher education and the labour market depends on becoming fluent in a second language. This presents a challenge to education policy: when and how in the school programme should a transition to the second language occur? While a large theoretical...

The paper reviews some of the existing economics of education literature from the perspective of South Africa’s education policymaking needs. It also puts forward a suggested research agenda for future work. The review is arranged according to five key areas of analysis: rates of return,...

Various data analysis approaches are used to gauge recent pre-primary enrolment trends in South Africa and the level of compliance with official age-grade norms in Grades R and 1. An analysis of the circumstances of Grade R learners finds that large class sizes are a problem. Two separate logit...

In South Africa there has been a surge in publicly funded adult literacy education in recent years. There is a recognition that for the effective monitoring of adult literacy, direct measures of literacy are required. Grade attainment, self-reported ability to read and behavioural variables...

A review of a few input-output models indicates the importance of teacher ability, which may be independent of years of training, for improving pupil performance. A historical analysis confirms the substantial pay increases experienced by teachers in the mid-1990s, moderate pay increases in real...