A policy of free basic services (water, sanitation and electricity) was introduced by the government in 2000 to provide basic services to households unable to afford these services. The policy allows for six kilolitres of water free monthly to all households, irrespective of household size or...

This study analyses the extent to which the poor benefit from Free Basic Services (FBS), which include free basic water, free basic electricity, free basic sanitation and free basic solid waste removal. Unfortunately, none of the data sets analysed could be used to conduct fiscal incidence...

Innovation is the transformation of a new idea or scientific discovery into technology through introducing, applying, and integrating it in common practice. The outcome is that people can progressively do more with the same effort, produce different outcomes with the same artefacts and produce...

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...

Analysts such as Hanushek and Woessman have brought to the fore the deceptiveness of education enrolments, or years of schooling, in growth regressions and the need to consider educational quality. In this paper, a nonlinear programming solution is proposed as a way of normalising to a single...

Although racial segregation has been abolished for 18 years now, schools which served predominantly White students under apartheid remain functional, while those which served Black students remain dysfunctional and unable to impart the necessary numeracy and literacy skills students should be...

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...

Have recent expansions of access to primary schooling in African countries led to deterioration in the quality of education delivered? This paper helps clarify this question by presenting an appropriate conceptual framework: instead of considering country average test scores and enrolment rates...