On 27 May 2025, Resep hosted a workshop on socio-emotional skills and early learning at STIAS in Stellenbosch. The event brought together a mix of education researchers, policymakers, funders, and practitioners to spark dialogue on ...

RESEP has recently hosted a week-long introductory course on Quantitative Data Analysis in the Economics of Education. This course aimed to equip researchers in the education sector in South Africa with the quantitative and statistical ...

RESEP researchers Heleen Hofmeyr and Nic Spaull recently launched the Roots & Shoots study, a longitudinal research study funded by the Mr Price Foundation that aims to track learners from when they first enter school until the end of the Foundation Phase.

RESEP was again privileged to host its annual QER conference at STIAS from 31 August to 1 September 2022. There is much value in bringing together academics, government, NGOs and funders involved in education improvement in South Africa. Two days of new research, engaging panels and critical questioning reminded us of how much work there is to be done, while also revealing the advancement in collaboration that has been made across research and government work.

A recent RESEP report, Learning Losses from COVID-19 in the Western Cape has received significant media attention, including features in Rapport, CityPress, SABC, News24, eNCA & Newzroom Africa.

What do you need to know to make the world a better place? This is the topic that Max Roser, founder and director of the internationally acclaimed website Our World in Data, recently addressed at ...

A new study by RESEP researchers Servaas van der Berg, Martin Gustafsson and Cobus Burger for the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) on Teacher Supply and demand has just been released by DHET. ...

RESEP research associate, Tia Linda Zuze recently wrote an opinion article that was published on the news site News24. The piece details the essential contributions of women who have been tackling the Covid pandemic in terms of research and policy.

Prospects of low voter turnout and ongoing protest about the quality of service delivery should be no surprise, according to a new study. Tina Fransman, a PhD student in Economics at Stellenbosch University, working with Dr Marisa von Fintel,  one of her supervisors, explored the relationship between public service delivery, voting in elections and protest behaviour in South Africa.

A paper composed by early career researchers at RESEP, Martin Mwale and Dr Martina Mchenga, and their co-author Dr Gowokani Chirwa, has recently been published in a highly ranked international journal.

Teacher supply and demand is a complex matter. The ultimate aim is to have a teacher in front of every class, now and for the foreseeable future. This also implies an ideal class size. The quality of teachers is obviously important too – and a topic for another occasion.

Infographic describing learner flows through South African schools

As Visiting Fellow with the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) at Rhodes University, Martin Gustafsson recently produced a policy and literature review titled ‘Carbon taxes and the attainment of emissions reductions targets in South Africa: A critical stocktaking of recent analyses and policies’.

A new paper on COVID-19 learning losses in South Africa has been published in the International Journal of Educational Development.

This project is a collaboration between Stellenbosch University, Theewaterskloof municipality and Western Cape Department of Human Settlements. The aim is to use upward and downward accountability interventions to improve the quality of subsidised housing.   ...

Repetition is a serious problem in South Africa, and the Western Cape is no exception. In any given year between 2007 and 2019, repetition has ranged between 72,000 and 100,000, with notable enrolment bulges in grades 1, 4, 9 and 10. An important consequence of repetition—when not cancelled by dropout—is an increase in the proportion of children who are older than what would be considered appropriate for a particular grade. For example, at least a third of grade 12 learners in 2019 were overage.

When meeting Dumisani Hompashe and listening to his story, the word “resilience" automatically comes to mind. Because resilience is the silver thread running through his entire life, from his childhood to his part-time PhD studies in Economics at Stellenbosch University (SU).

School quality is important in determining children’s success at school. But individual characteristics of the child also play a role. In particular, researchers and teachers are starting to pay more attention to the part that social and emotional skills play in academic success. These are also known as character skills or soft skills.

Improving education outcomes and producing a skills revolution, as well as ensuring a healthy nation, are two of the key priorities of the sixth administration, as highlighted by President Cyril Ramaphosa in his 2019 state of the nation address (Sona). The complementarities between education and health are well documented: children who are healthy, stimulated and well-nourished from birth are better equipped to develop cognitively and learn than children who receive poor nutrition, are not stimulated often or suffer from poor health.

Three RESEP doctoral candidates were capped at a recent Stellenbosch University (SU) Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences graduation ceremony for PhDs. Congratulations to Joel Gondwe, Dumisani Hompashe and Heleen Hofmeyr. Also in attendance were some of the candidates' supervisors, Gabrielle Wills and Anja Smith. Ronelle Burger additionally supervised a successful candidate not involved with RESEP.

Martin Gustafsson has recently published a report titled "Pandemic-related disruptions to schooling and impacts on learning proficiency indicators in which he has modelled the possible effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on global indicators of learning proficiency.

A new Youth Capital report, Matrics 'on the Fringe': a Review of the Second Chance Programme, has recently been released. The report draws from the findings of a technical report compiled by RESEP researcher Martin Gustafsson who, assisted by PhD candidate Lunga Swelindawo, analysed government reports and surveyed online material to produce a qualitative study of second-chance Matric opportunities

Household surveys systematically exclude or undercount vulnerable populations and these exclusions and underestimations will materially affect estimates of need such as access to clean water or adequate sanitation.

RESEP's Servaas van der Berg and Ronelle Burger recently contributed to a Bureau for Economic Development (BER) report tracking the progress of the National Development Plan (NDP). The document measures the extent to which South Africa's development objectives, as detailed in the NDP, have been achieved. 

To prevent children from falling behind in the developmental sequence of reading, a shared vision of what reading success looks like at each step is required. A multi-disciplinary team from SALDRU at UCT, RESEP at Stellenbosch University and NORC at the University of Chicago have collaborated to inform this shared vision through the establishment of benchmarks for foundational reading skills in three Nguni languages. The summary and technical benchmarking reports were recently launched by the Department of Education as part of their workshop on Reading Benchmarks for African Languages.

For better or worse, all of our careers are shifted, shaped and sometimes shortened by influential figures in our lives. When it comes to women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields, access to support structures are even more important for growth and development. Unfortunately, many females still have to overcome barriers of prejudice and inequality.

With the announced hard-lockdown in March 2020, and as with most other non-essential activities, all fieldwork at Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) was shutdown. However, researchers at RESEP were quick to realise that rapidly updated, accurate information on key outcomes such as unemployment, household income, child hunger and access to government grants would be of vital importance for sound decision making during a global pandemic.

Dr Nic Spaull from Stellenbosch University's Economics Department was this week awarded a P-rating by the National Research Foundation (NRF), the highest rating possible for post-doctoral researchers in South Africa.

Research on labour markets and education in Southern Africa. Analysis of household data sets and educational evaluation data such as SACMEQ, PIRLS or TIMSS, with a particular focus on labour market outcomes and how these are influenced by education level and quality.

Stellenbosch Working Paper Series No. WP20/2020 Publication date: November 2020

This project is linked to the Early Learning Programme (ELP) and uses data from the Readership and Literacy project but is also supplemented by others funded by Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

A portion of this project includes reanalysing WCED CEMIS and Systemic Tests to determine how early learning performance affects progressions, dropout, and matric results. The project is currently in its second year and is funded by the Allan Grey Orbis Foundation Endowment. 

Using longitudinal data components and disability statistics, this project aims to investigate school-based assessments. Funds have been received from the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation. The project is currently waiting for data.

It is said that Women's Month is a celebration of women's achievements and the important (and often under-recognised) role that they play in South African society. Three women researchers from RESEP have recently appeared in ...

RESEP researcher recent Oped in News24: Opportunities for girls to excel few and far between RESEP researcher, Linda Zuze, recently wrote an article for News 24 based on an earlier RESEP policy brief titled 'Opportunity Gaps Among ...

In an effort to provide expert opinions, as well as assist in guiding public discussions around socio-economic policy, such as education, and issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the press contributions of RESEP researchers have increased markedly over the past several months.

In April this year, 24-year-old Lunga Swelindawo received his Master's degree in Economics. This Swartlander knew from a young age that he was different: He wanted to build bridges, lift other people and change people's lives. Leo Cordom talked to Lunga Swelindawo about big dreams, to feel like a token black and his next big hurdle.

Gabrielle Wills and Servaas van der Berg explore the development and trial of new metrics to quantify school leadership and management practices and/or processes considered to be theoretically related to literacy outcomes. 

I use the latest (16 May) version of the OxCGRT dataset to answer three fairly common questions about COVID-19 in the South African context. The three questions are: (1) Is South Africa’s curve a relatively flat one? (2.) Does South Africa have ‘one of the toughest lockdowns on earth'? (3.) How do restrictions and ‘flattening the curve’ relate to each other, and where does South Africa fit in?

Good policymaking requires reliable, comparable statistics over time. Despite there being an annual survey of agricultural firms in South Africa, confusion exists about the number of commercial farms in South Africa and the structure of the agricultural sector. According to the agricultural census in 2007, there were 39 966 commercial farms, while the agricultural survey mentions a figure of 64 192 and 57 126 in 2008 and 2017, respectively. With such diverging numbers across time, which figures should we trust and how does one analyse trends in the sector and make evidence-based decisions?

It is critical that the debates leading up to the re-opening of South Africa’s schools, and the actual process of re-opening, which will almost certainly occur in stages, be informed by the emerging medical evidence and reports on best school practices. Re-opening the pre-school sector, covering around 2.4 million children, and the earliest school grades, seems least risky in terms of infections. Moreover, there are strong educational and nutritional arguments which favour prioritising these levels.

Many have to fall back on that familiar South African last resort, the extended family. It will take some time before the full effect of Covid-19, the lockdown and recession will be clear, writes Servaas van der Berg.

Using a dataset known as the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT), RESEP's Martin Gustafsson assesses the South African response to COVID-19 relative to that of 139 other nations.

The coronavirus pandemic working its way through South African society will have many knock-on effects, one of them will be hunger and malnutrition as 9-million children no longer receive free school meals while their schools are shut.

Competing against some 738 data scientists from around the globe, RESEP’s Cobus Burger recently won the Uber Movement SANRAL Cape Town Challenge. Burger's model was most accurately able to predict when and where road accidents were going to happen on Cape Town’s busy roads.

A cost-effective intervention that is easy to implement – this is how researchers describe the standardised reference letter that was developed to assist unemployed South Africans in their search for a job. The study found that job-seekers with previous work experience who use reference letters in their job applications stand to increase their employment prospects by more than 50%.

This small workshop largely involved RESEP researchers and people from the policymaking world. It was held at STIAS in July and funded from RESEP's own resources.

This two-year project for the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) will involve a number of researchers from outside RESEP, including Elizabeth (Lilly) Pretorius from Unisa, Cally Ardington of UCT, Nompumelelo Mohohlwane from the DBE, and Nwabisa Makaluza and Ngamso Mtsatse from Funda Wande. Some of the research links to the Early Learning Programme.

This project for the Department of Higher Education and Training involved writing this report on DHET’s behalf, analysing their own data.

In the last ten years, RESEP has expanded its health policy expertise to the point where it has built up substantial expertise and experience in the field. The group has differentiated themselves by focusing on the demand side, understanding healthcare from the perspective of the client. We have been involved in a variety of projects, but they have all been attempts to listen closely and anew to people’s stories – whether it be through primary data gathering or secondary data analysis.

Two recent papers by RESEP's Martin Gustafsson look into, firstly, the historical trends between nations in children's reading and mathematics performance and, secondly, their future projections. These are based on three international evaluations: PIRLS, PISA and LLECE.

Over the period 2016 to 2018, RESEP were engaged in a study titled "Leadership for Literacy" funded by the ESRC/DFID. The project resulted in the collection of new data on reading in three African languages. In this research impact brief published by the REAL Centre, University of Cambridge, and The Impact Initiative, the impact of this work to establish tentative benchmarks in African languages is highlighted.

RESEP led an introductory training course on quantitative data analysis for researchers in education in Stellenbosch from 11 to 15 November. The course was attended by 29 participants working in education, and included graduate students, researchers, NGO memebers and policymakers from across South Africa. Funding was provided by the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation Endowment as part of RESEP’s Early Learning Programme.

  Book: Improving Early Literacy Outcomes Chapter: Assessing Early Literacy Outcomes in Burkina Faso and Senegal: Using DHS and PASEC to Combine Access and Quality Authors: Nic Spaul and Adaiah Lilenstein   https://brill.com/view/title/55194?lang=en   Spaull, N. & ...

Spaull, N. (2019). Learning to Read and Write for Meaning and Pleasure. In Spaull, N. & Comings, J. (Eds), Improving Early Literacy Outcomes. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill

Spaull, N. & Pretorius, E. (2019). Still Falling at the First Hurdle: Examining Early grade Reading in South Africa. In Spaull, N., & Jansen, J. (Eds), South African Schooling: The Enigma of Inequality. Springer Nature. Cham, Switzerland.

Spaull, N. (2019). Equity: A Price Too High to Pay? In Spaull, N., & Jansen, J. (Eds), South African Schooling: The Enigma of Inequality. Springer Nature. Cham, Switzerland.

We will be hosting an introductory training course on data analysis for education researchers from 11-15 November 2019. Put your nominee in touch with us for further information about the application process.

On May 27, 2019, RESEP and uMama of Stellenbosch University, Bath University and the Western Cape Department of Human Settlements hosted a symposium on subsidised housing at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS).

Congratulations to Tina Fransman, who not only starts her PhD at RESEP in 2019 but also won the 2018 Economic Society of SA (Essa) Founders’ Medal for Best Economics Master’s Thesis at a South African university.

Nangamso Mtsatse, a RESEP PhD student, has been named as one of the world's top 30 rising young leaders (under 30 years of age) in the literacy field by International Literacy Association (ILA).

Deadline: 19 April 2019 About the award: Research on Socio-Economic Policy (RESEP) is pleased to announce the availability of a bursary to support a currently registered Masters' student at any South African University. The bursary ...

RESEP researcher Nic Spaull unpacks the implications of the 2019 South African Budget, with a focus on education in particular.

RESEP members often collaborate in a number of ways with the international bodies that oversee policy and service delivery trends across the world. These bodies have included the World Bank, Unicef and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS).

RESEP team members have been acknowledged for highlighting the value of a systems approach to education research.

Dr Nic Spaull, Senior Researcher in the Research on Socioeconomic Policy (RESEP) group in the Department of Economics, spoke about the importance of restoring our malfunctioning primary education system at the presidential roundtable discussions.

Wills, G., Shepherd, D., and Kotze, J. (2018). Explaining the Western Cape performance paradox: An econometric analysis, in The Politics and Governance of Basic Education: A Tale of Two South African Provinces (Ed. Levy, B., Cameron, R., Hoadley, U. and Naidoo, V.): Oxford University Press.

RESEP's annual, two-day conference on Quantitative Applications in Education Research was held on 6 and 7 September 2018 in Stellenbosch

It's been a while in the making, but we are very excited to announce that the day has finally arrived: RESEP's new website is now live!

RESEP's most recent policy briefs are now available for download.

Unicef Namibia and the Namibian Ministry of Gender Equity and Child Welfare engaged RESEP to conduct this study. Dr. Chris van Wyk advised and assisted the Ministry with undertaking the survey and then a larger RESEP team analysed the data.

In 2018, RESEP was contracted by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) via the National Skills Fund to draft an Investment Trends report.

A paper by RESEP’s Servaas van der Berg and Heleen Hofmeyr, titled “An incomplete transition – overcoming the legacy of exclusion in South Africa”, is now available on the World Bank’s website.

The Department of Higher Education Training (DHET) course is funded by UNICEF. The course, which is a Stellenbosch University accredited short course, typically lasts two weeks.

Servaas van der Berg has recently undertaken some work for the World Bank in Lesotho as part of a Public Expenditure Review.

The “Funda Wande: Teaching Reading for Meaning” project aims to help address the fact that most (58%) South African children don't read for meaning, by developing a high-quality, free, open-access and SAQA-approved course: the ‘Certificate in Teaching Early Grade Reading.”

In 2017, RESEP's Chris van Wyk was commissioned by UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS), as the lead consultant to develop training materials and methodological tools to be used for capacity building activities.

RESEP hosted researchers from Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE) for the Africa RISE–RESEP Conference on Education Research at Stellenbosch University. Over the two day conference, members from the RISE Ethiopia and Tanzania Country Research Teams (CRT) joined researchers from RESEP, as well as other key researchers working on quantitative research on education in Africa.

Research on development issues in an African context. Analysis of household data sets, with a particular focus on poverty and labour market outcomes.

SPAULL NA. Schooling in South Africa: How low-quality education becomes a poverty trap. In: De Lannoy A, Swartz S, Lake L, Smith C (eds.) South African Child Gauge 2015, Children’s Institute, University of Cape Town, ...

CHITIGA M, DECALUWE B, MABUGU ERM, MAISONNAVE H, ROBICHAUD R, SHEPHERD DL, VAN DER BERG S, VON FINTEL D.P. A retrospective look at how well a macro-micro model can analyse the impact of the global ...

BURGER R, DASGUPTA I, OWENS T. A Model of non-governmental organization regulation with an application to Uganda. Economic Development and Cultural Change 2015; 64(1):71-111. BURGER R, DASGUPTA I, OWENS T. Why pay NGOs to involve ...

RESEP held its third annual "Quantitative Applications in Education Research" conference at STIAS in Stellenbosch from 28 – 29 September 2017.

This article originally appeared on the Business Day website as a partially edited version, which can be found here. For the original article, please read below.

On Friday, 24 March 2017, RESEP launched its synthesis report entitled “A Society Divided: How Unequal Education Quality Limits Social Mobility in South Africa”. The research project was headed up by Prof Servaas van der Berg and the report incorporates the research of about 20 authors.

On the 19th and 20th of September this year, RESEP hosted the “Conference on Quantitative Applications in Education” at STIAS. The conference was attended by 85 participants from government, academia and civil society, with a ...

Book Summary Experts from the global North and South analyse the implications of economic crises on children, with a particular focus on the emerging evidence from the recent global economic crisis and food and fuel ...

Abstract The arrival of European settlers at the Cape in 1652 marked the beginning of what would become an extremely unequal society. Comparative analysis reveals that certain endowments exist in societies that experience a ‘persistence ...

Abstract: This study analyses information and feedback from matriculation-level continuous assessment in the South African education system in 2005. Continuous assessment (CASS) at the time carried a 25% weight in the final matriculation (Grade 12) ...