Our team

Researcher

Having completed her undergraduate studies at Stellenbosch in 2005, Debra passed both her Bcomm Honours and Mcomm degrees Cum Laude in 2007 and 2009 respectively. Debra was employed as a junior lecturer and researcher in the Economics Department at Stellenbosch from 2008 to 2011 before working as a researcher at the African Micro Economic Research Unit based at the University of Witwatersrand. Since 2013 Debra has returned to Stellenbosch University, where she works as a researcher with the Research on Socio-economic Policy (RESEP). She is also a VU-NRF Desmond Tutu Doctoral Scholarship candidate and completed her PhD in Development Economics through Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Stellenbosch University. Her thesis focuses on analysing efficiency and effectiveness within the South African education system. Her research interests include applied micro-econometrics, the economics of education and labour economics.

 

Articles

• Explaining the Western Cape performance paradox: An econometric analysis
• Understanding language in education and grade 4 reading performance using a 'natural experiment' of Botswana and South Africa
• Gender, Self-concept and Mathematics and Science Performance of South African Grade 9 Students
• Interrogating a Paradox of Performance in the WCED: A Provincial and Regional Comparison of Student Learning
• What role can curriculum and language play in performance differences in maths and science?
• The short- and medium-term impacts of the Roving Caregivers Programme in St Lucia on early childhood cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes
• Interrogating the paradox of performance in the WCED: Provincial and regional comparisons of student learning
• It depends which side you are on: understanding the role that language in education plays in Grade 4 reading performance using a “natural experiment” of Botswana and South Africa
• Quantifying educational inequality: an application of Finite Mixture Modeling using TIMSS 2011 / Janet Graaff: Governance of South African No-Fee Schools: preliminary insights to be gained from qualitative and quantitative analysis
• Assessing lack of common support in causal inference using Bayesian Nonparametric: application for the effect of attending a historically advantaged school
• Learning what mattes: a boosted regression tree approach to school production modelling
• Post-Apartheid Trends in Gender Discrimination in South Africa: Analysis through Decomposition Techniques
• Signalling performance: Continuous assessment and matriculation examination marks in South African schools
• The impact of the international economic crisis on child poverty in South Africa
• The costs of illiteracy in South Africa
• Constraints to school effectiveness: what prevents poor schools from delivering results?
• A question of efficiency: decomposing South African reading test scores using PIRLS 2006
• Learn to teach, teach to learn: A within-pupil across-subject approach to estimating the impact of teacher subject knowledge on South African grade 6 performance
• Is school based assessment in matric achieving its potential?
• For richer, for poorer? Can lessons learnt from wealthy schools be applied to help poor schools deliver better results?
• The open door of learning – Access restricted: School effectiveness and efficiency across the South African education system
• A Retrospective Look at How Well a Macro‐Micro Model Can Analyze the Impact of the Global Financial Crisis on a Developing Country
• The Impact of the International Economic Crisis on Child Poverty in South Africa
• Reflecting on an impact evaluation of the Grade R programme: Method, results and policy responses
• Continuous assessment and matriculation examination marks—an empirical examination
• The impact of the introduction of grade r on learning outcomes
• Child Poverty in South Africa and the Global Financial and Economic Crisis
•  An analysis of continuous assessment (CASS) compared to matriculation examination results at South African schools