In this note by Ursula Hoadley, she tracks curriculum and assessment policy changes over three years (2020 to 2023) in South Africa in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and school closures. Some changes were made to the national CAPS curriculum documents in the form of trimming content (2020), identifying ‘fundamental’ knowledge (2020), and reviewing subject content (2022).
This document, “Public Expenditure on Education in South Africa, 1987/8 to 1991/2: An Analysis of the Data,” provides a comprehensive review of government spending on education over a crucial five-year period. It meticulously examines the allocation and utilisation of funds within the South African education sector, offering insights into the financial priorities and policy decisions during this time.
This Report focuses on education and training systems and the structure of schooling. Aspects of education planning, finance, and management are discussed in both this and the separate report on Governance, and there are various aspects of the organisation of education discussed below which are specific concerns of other research group reports.

Three international testing programmes, including PIRLS, point to educational quality improvements in South Africa during the period 2002 to 2019. The gains were substantial, relative to the steepness of improvements seen in other countries. What lay behind these trends? National education quality trends are not easy to explain, and this is seldom attempted in a systematic manner.

An emerging interdisciplinary literature explores how kinship practices affect household resource allocation through efficiency of production and consumption. This paper focuses on a key gender norm – how a resource transfer to households affects school drop out of girls relative to boys, under different kinship practices.