The emphasis placed in the existing South African school production function literature on better skilled teachers and better school management is discussed. Ordinary least squares and hierarchical linear production function models, using 2000 SACMEQ data, for the country and for a sub-set of...

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...

In South Africa, like in many developing countries, the differences between enrolment totals, estimated by the education authorities, and the numbers of children in the country, estimated by demographers in the national statistical agency, defy easy explanations and suggest that one or both sets...

In 2000, Thomas, Wang, and Fan published a paper calling for the application of the Gini coefficient to educational attainment. The idea was to treat educational attainment as a wealth stock, and to calculate Gini coefficients for, say, years of attainment, as a way to see trends within...

This paper, prepared for the National Planning Commission (NPC), examines progress in the education sector against the National Development Plan (NDP), but also assesses the NDP itself. In hindsight, how well-placed and realistic were the education priorities of the NDP, which was released in...

This research report was produced for the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) and the Department of Basic Education (DBE). The study was undertaken to assess demand for, and supply of, teachers in the public service, in order to better inform teacher training policy.The need for...

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,...