In this report, we review what we know about learning losses and other schooling impacts in South Africa after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020 and 2021). Four overall trends emerge from existing evidence. First, there have been extensive learning losses in the General Education and...

This study investigates whether health spending and access to services in South Africa have become more or less pro-poor over time. We find that over the post-apartheid period health spending has become significantly more pro-poor. In addition to the rising share of the health budget allocated...

An almost unnoticed problem in the South African education system is the high rate of grade repetition. In this report, a combination of household and administrative datasets is used to identify patterns in learner repetition and dropout in South African schooling and the costs associated with...

This paper provides a broad overview of the economic dimensions of the educational situation in South Africa a decade after the political transition. An important question is whether changes since the transition have substantially ameliorated the role of race in education. Census and survey data...

This note provides an overview of South Africa’s education system and learning outcomes. It reviews early childhood development, basic education, and higher education (university education and vocational training). It is a review of available research in support of the South Africa Systematic...

Much hope is placed on education systems to reduce socio-economic learning gaps. However, in South Africa, uneven functioning of the school system widens learning gaps. This paper analyses education performance using ANA data. Weak calibration and inter-temporal or inter-grade comparability of...

Much hope is placed on education systems to reduce socio-economic learning gaps. However, in South Africa, uneven functioning of the school system widens learning gaps. This paper analyses education performance using ANA data. Weak calibration and inter-temporal or inter-grade comparability of...

The results of the fifth and final wave of the National Income Dynamics Study – Coronavirus Rapid Mobile (NIDS-CRAM) survey reported in this paper provide an update and analysis of the trend in household food insecurity and hunger during the past year in South Africa. In a previous paper in...

The recent development of the Early Learning Outcome Measure (ELOM), a culturally appropriate test for children aged 50 to 69 months for all eleven South Africa’s official languages, offers benchmarks against which children’s development can be tested. This paper compares the programme gains...

This report forms a part of a larger project funded by and undertaken on behalf of the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation. The report analyses school flows, repetition, and dropout using a novel analysis of school-based assessments, and how well these predict future performance and learner flows....