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News and Opinion

Below you’ll find the latest news about the RESEP team and their previous, future or ongoing work. Also featured are expert opinions on relevant happenings within the fields of education, labour, development and health.

School completion, the matric and post-school transitions in South Africa

Youth born just after the turn of democracy in 1994 have the highest years of completed education of any cohort in South African history. This is a trend worth celebrating. Yet South Africa’s educational progress is occurring alongside various constraints: slow economic growth; high and rising unemployment especially among youth; public finance constraints in expanding post-school education and training (PSET) opportunities; and growing concerns about mismatches between youth’s skills and the skills demanded in a changing world of work.

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January 11, 2025 By: Gabrielle Wills, Rebecca Selkirk and John Kruger PDF

The impact of the 2023 Back-on-Track Programme on learning: A Report to the Western Cape Education Department

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Western Cape Education Department’s (WCED) 2023 Back-on-Track (BoT) initiative is proving to be a groundbreaking step towards educational recovery. This R1.2 billion programme has targeted critical learning gaps in mathematics and language, focusing on Grades 4, 7, and 8. The results, independently evaluated by RESEP, reveal remarkable gains in learning outcomes.

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December 19, 2024 By: Servaas van der Berg, Chris van Wyk & Chloé van Biljon PDF

An Overview of the 8th Annual QER Conference (21-22 August 2024)

From 21-22 August 2024, Resep hosted its 8th annual Quantitative Education Research (QER) conference at STIAS, Stellenbosch. Among the more than 100 attendees were academics, students, government officials, NGOs representatives and other stakeholders. Speakers, chairs and participants collectively provided an overview of key trends in South African education and profiled new research. In this synopsis of the 2-day programme, some key insights across all presentations are considered under eight emerging conference themes.

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September 16, 2024 By: Gabrielle WillsGabrielle Wills PDF

Assessment matters: What can we understand about the National Senior Certificate results during COVID-19 from university entrance exams?

In this research note, Emma Whitelaw and Nicola Branson from the University of Cape Town (UCT), examine the association between National Senior Certificate (NSC) performance and National Benchmark Test (NBT) scores among applicants to UCT. They find that during COVID-19 disrupted years, applicants’ admission point scores, derived from NSC grades, rose relative to NBT scores which remained similar since the onset of COVID-19.

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May 25, 2024 By: Emma Whitelaw and Nicola Branson PDF