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...

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...

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...

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 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 areas of research: rates of return, production...

South African and international household and education datasets are analysed to characterise patterns of dropping out, grade repetition, academic under-performance and under-preparedness for post-school life in South African secondary schools. A number of measurement error problems are moreover...

An existing accounting framework to describe an education system is elaborated and used as a framework for understanding and comparing the resource allocation policies of the South African and Argentinean schooling systems. The comparison highlights how, by paying fewer teachers more (relative...