Starting behind and staying behind in South Africa: The case of insurmountable learning deficits in mathematics

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 Grade 3 level. (2) The learning gap between the poorest 60% of students and the wealthiest 20% of students is approximately three Grade-levels in Grade 3, growing to four Grade-levels by Grade 9. The paper concludes by arguing that the later in life we attempt to repair early learning deficits in mathematics, the costlier the remediation becomes.     

发展中国家少见的成功范例 ——南非学生贷款案例分析

发展中国家学生贷款的失败案例随处可见,但南非学生贷款却是少有的成功案例.南非学生贷款通达了目标人群,回收效果好,管理成本可控.其成功的根本原因在于,政府以立法的手段将追求教育公平的理念落到了实处,政府不仅积极地投入财政资金,还赋予有关机构一定的义务,协助和参与回收学生贷款.     

Principal leadership changes and their consequences for school performance in South Africa

School leadership changes are gaining momentum in South Africa as larger proportions of incumbent principals near retirement age. While this presents opportunities to replace weaker school leaders with better ones, these changes may also destabilize school environments and impede on learning. This study explores this issue using payroll data on public school principals in South Africa linked to national data on schools and matriculation examination outcomes. School fixed effects and propensity score matching with difference-in-difference estimations confirm that principal changes are indeed detrimental to school performance with larger disruptive effects observed in poorer schools.     

Masculinity and violence: Gender,poverty and culture in a rural primary school in South Africa

This qualitative study draws from focus group discussions with primary school boys,girls and their teachers to examine how violence is experienced at a rural school in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The study draws attention to ‘amaphara' masculinity’ as conceptualized by Hunter (2021) and stick fighting as key to understanding the local expressions of violence and its problematic relationship with girls and 'other' boys.Examining these practices, and the wider sociocultural contexts in which they are embedded, we argue is vital for gender violence prevention in rural schools.     

Reconceptualising educational assessment in South Africa — testing times for teachers

This paper explores some of the problems arising when Continuous Assessment (CA) is grafted onto established pedagogic practices. It focuses on three issues: teachers' restricted understandings of assessment, teachers' emphasis on criteria that demonstrate concern with social control, and some of the problems connected with peer assessment. Two vignettes derived from fieldwork associated with a project to improve the quality of primary education are used to raise the issues. We argue that the development of desired practices is hampered above all by tacit values in tension with those underpinning the new curriculum. These values, together with the complexity of curriculum design, create serious problems of manageability and interpretation, which can only be addressed through detailed interactive in-service training, aimed at reconceptualising teachers' notions of assessment.     

南非现行小学英语课程标准及课程评价

在21世纪,英语作为一门全世界广泛应用的工具性语言,其重要作用不言而喻。作为英 国曾经的殖民地,英语是南非的官方语言,故在英语教育方面应该有值得我们借鉴之处。从课程标 准的框架、目标、内容和评价方面对南非小学英语课程标准进行分析研究,可以发现其课程标准设 置详细全面,课程标准语言表述具有良好的可操作性,且可选择学习不同的语言,这对进一步完善 我国小学英语课程标准设置具有一定的启示意义。     

Regional inequality in university attainment in seven African countries since 1960

Inequalities in access to university education are of concern across the world, but many countries in Africa have faced particularly pronounced regional and ethnic inequalities in educational attainment. Have such disparities increased or decreased since the 1960s? Using census data to trace the sub-national origins of university students in seven African countries (Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia) over successive birth cohorts shows that regional inequalities in access have taken a u-shaped path. In the first two decades of independence, as higher education expanded from a low base, graduates were growing more regionally and ethnically representative of the national populations. Since the 1980s regional inequalities have increased in most countries, on account of a growing attainment gap between people born in the largest cities and the remaining populations. This growing educational advantage accruing to those born in the main urban metropolises was initially driven by a slowdown in enrolment growth, coupled with high rates of skills-selective urban migration and higher educational performance in the urban regions. This new urban bias is rapidly changing the composition of the region’s educational elites.     

Race,school choice and transfers to opportunity: implications for educational stratification in South Africa

This study investigates the links between race, school choice and educational stratification in South Africa. It focuses on racial differences in families’ efforts to take advantage of choice by transferring to opportunity (i.e., transferring to a school perceived to offer students better access to educational opportunity than their current school) and explores the implications of those transfers for emerging patterns of racial stratification in access to high quality schools. Findings reveal significant racial variation in transfers to opportunity and suggest a complex link between race and the ways in which historically disadvantaged groups have engaged with the post-apartheid educational opportunity structure.     

The “A” factor: Coming to terms with the question of legacy in South African education

This paper attempts to offer an alternative framework for assessing education delivery in South Africa. Its purpose is to develop an analytic approach for understanding education delivery in South Africa in the last 11 years and to use this framework to pose a set of strategic questions about how policy might be framed to deal with delivery. The paper begins with a quick review of the country's achievements and challenges in education and shows that a failure to produce a high quality education system remains the country's primary challenge. The broad approach that is taken is to suggest that dominant approaches for understanding this lack of performance underplay the specificity of the country's context and specifically so its apartheid legacy. This legacy, it is argued, continues to be determinative in shaping, and accounting for the character of current social behaviour in the country, including the performance of children in schools.     

Sexuality education in South Africa: Three essential questions

Sex education is the cornerstone on which most HIV/AIDS prevention programmes rest and since the adoption of Outcomes-Based Education (OBE), has become a compulsory part of the South African school curriculum through the Life Orientation learning area. However, while much focus has been on providing young people with accurate and frank information about safe sex, this paper questions whether school-based programmes sufficiently support the needs of young people. This paper is based on a desk-review of the literature on sex and sexuality education and examines it in relation to the South African educational context and policies. It poses three questions: (a) what do youth need from sexuality education? (b) Is school an appropriate environment for sex education? (c) If so, what can be said about the content of sex education as well as pedagogy surrounding it? Through reviewing the literature this paper critically engages with education on sex and sexuality in South Africa and will argue that in order to effectively meet the needs of youth, the content of sexual health programmes needs to span the whole spectrum of discourses, from disease to desire. Within this spectrum, youth should be constructed as “knowers” as opposed to innocent in relation to sex. How youth are taught as well as how their own knowledge and experience is positioned in the classroom is as important as content in ensuring that youth avoid negative sexual health outcomes.     

To be or not to be an academic: South African graduate students’ vocational choices

In the post-apartheid era, South African universities are striving to attract and retain diverse faculty, as mandated by the 1998 Employment Equity Act (EEA). While the focus on faculty is critical to the transformation agenda, it is informative to step back and consider the factors that influence graduate students’ decisions regarding joining the academy. This qualitative study explores the educational experiences and vocational decisions of 50 masters and doctoral students from the EEA's “designated groups,” who are poised to become academics. Factors influencing graduate students’ vocational choices should be taken into consideration as universities strive to attract more diverse faculty.     

Education and skills for development in South Africa: Reflections on the accelerated and shared growth initiative for South Africa

In July 2005, President Mbeki announced the launch of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA), a new development strategy designed to help the South African state meet the ANC's 2004 election pledges, namely:

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halve unemployment;     

Educational paradigms and engineering educators in South Africa

In this response to Waghid (2000) the authorsquestion the validity of conclusions reachedfrom an examination of the proceedings of anengineering education conference in SouthAfrica. The authors argue that these papersdo not represent the views of engineeringeducators in general. Furthermore they querythe way in which Waghid uses reference toteaching methods in these papers to deduce thetheoretical perspective of the presenters. Itis suggested that the views of the educatorsinvolved in this conference and others like itin South Africa, can be characterised asfalling within a broad interpretivist(constructivist) perspective. Finally, theauthors agree that an engagement with acritical perspective would contributesignificantly to the transformation of theculture of engineering education in SouthAfrica.     

System-wide improvement of early-grade mathematics: New evidence from the Gauteng Primary Language and Mathematics Strategy

This article reports on a two-year evaluation of the Gauteng Primary Language and Mathematics Strategy (GPLMS), an innovative system-wide reform intervention designed to improve learning outcomes in Gauteng Province, South Africa. Using data from universal testing of all learners in 2008 on a provincial systemic evaluation, as well as data from the 2011, 2012 and 2013 Annual National Assessment tests, this article investigates whether or not the GPLMS improves the numeracy skills of learners in early-grade mathematics in underperforming schools. Using as identification strategy, the natural experiment that resulted from a miscalculation of the provincial systemic evaluation test scores in 2008, which had been used to assign schools to the GPLMS intervention, the study shows that the GPLMS intervention is positively associated with improvements in early-grade mathematics performance of schools in the neighbourhood around the assignment threshold. The findings of the study contribute to the growing body of knowledge that shows the effectiveness of combining lesson plans, learner resources, and quality teacher capacity building.     

Assessment policy in post-apartheid South Africa: challenges for improving education quality and learning

The South African education system has witnessed significant changes since 1994 when the democratically elected government began the process of dismantling the inherited apartheid order. The primary focus of the transformation process was to address the twin imperative of equity and quality in education, particularly for the historically marginalised black population. A key aspect of this transformation process remains the development of alternative assessment policies. This paper reviews the changes focusing on the stated rationale as well as their underlying assumptions and implications for practice. It argues that the changes have in many respects addressed the most obvious effects of the previous apartheid systems. However, it notes that, notwithstanding the policy intentions, assessment policy since 1994 has favoured a measurement focused-approach in the classroom, which has hindered a shift towards an assessment for learning approach. This, it argues, is partly fuelled by the abiding belief in and commitment to classroom testing and examinations as well as external national assessments as the key criterion for reforming learning and teaching practices in the classroom.     

Mathematical literacy of school leaving pupils in South Africa

This paper discusses some results of South African (SA) grade 12 pupils on an international test of mathematical literacy, administered in the framework of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) under the auspices of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). Three questions are addressed: (1) What are the strengths and weaknesses of SA school-leavers in mathematical reasoning and social utility from an international comparative perspective?: (2) What is the growth of SA pupils' mathematical literacy from grade 8 to 12? (3) What are the background variables that influence the level of mathematical literacy of SA school-leavers? Finally some implications of the results for SA education will be discussed.     

南非以结果为本位的教育改革

以结果为本位的教育是20世纪90年代在北美首先发展起来的。以结果为本位的教育有着深刻的理论和实践渊源,并建立在一定的前提假设之上,在具体的实践过程中,还得遵循相应的实施原则。在特定的背景下以结果为本位的教育传入南非后,经历了一系列的发展过程,在实施过程中也出现了一些问题。     

Managing the GAP between rich and poor? Biopolitics and (ab)normalized inequality in South African education for sustainable development

Abstract

The extreme inequality in South African education is well-documented by researchers. There is also a rich literature concerned with education for sustainable development (ESD) in the country. The relationship between these two phenomena has, however, been sparsely investigated. Drawing on biopolitical theory and fieldwork conducted in South Africa, this paper queries how ESD programmes handle the lifestyle gap that separates rich and poor populations. The article demonstrates how ESD, through ostensible sensitivity to local ‘realities’, is adjusted to comply with different socio-economic living conditions, and how different roles are assigned to rich and poor in the quest for sustainable development. This differentiation, it is argued, can be understood biopolitically. The paper further argues that the differentiation between populations in rich and poor settings implies a depoliticized notion of local ‘realities’ as something isolated and given, rather than relational and produced. While the overall findings suggest that ESD unfolds through a regime of practice wherein inequality has become effectively normalized, the paper also points to rare disruptive moments where the normal is rendered abnormal. Ultimately it is argued that the South African case is a useful entry-point for discussing generic problems of globally implementing ESD in an enormously unequal world.     

南非教师教育制度的重建:进展与成效

民主新南非的教育体系是在种族隔离教育遗产的基础上通过全方位的变革建立起来的。南非教师教育制度的重建是一个漫长、复杂的过程。通过调整管理体制、颁布教师教育标准、优化院校结构、出台国家政策框架等举措,南非已建构起一个以成果和能力为本位的、具有民主治理特质的、一体化、开放式的教师教育与发展体系。国家教师教育与发展政策框架的实施虽然取得了一些成效,但也面临多方面的不确定性和挑战。     

基督教与新南非的和平与稳定

新南非建立初期，国家面临种族、党派、政治、经济、社会治安等多种矛盾，南非本土基督教组织把非洲本土的政治、化与西方的基督教思想、民主精神相结合，强调民主、平等的同时，提倡爱与社会整体的和谐，在经济上帮助穷人，用宗教唤起人们的良知，让罪犯在上帝面前主动认罪，让黑人重新找田自信，为化解新南非的种种矛盾，为它在和平、稳定中逐步走向繁荣作出独特的贡献。