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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.

Teacher demographic dividend provincial spotlight dialogue

On 25 May 2023, the Teacher Demographic Dividend (TDD) project hosted its first Provincial Spotlight Dialogue at The Blades, Pretoria. The dialogue was organised with the aim of receiving feedback on the new research findings in TDD’s national and provincial reports, as well as on a proposed national survey investigating new teacher placement and retention. The dialogue was attended by officials from the Provincial Education Departments (PEDs), Department of Basic Education (DBE), Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) and National and Provincial Treasuries.

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June 2, 2023 By: RESEP Team PDF

COVID-19 and the South African curriculum policy response

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).

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May 16, 2023 By: Ursula Hoadley PDF

Educational issues and the impact of COVID-19: what education data reveal

COVID-19 caused disruptions to schooling on an unprecedented scale. Emerging evidence indicate sthat these disruptions impacted schooling in South Africa in many ways, from shortened curricula to significant learning losses occurring over the two years of the pandemic (Hoadley, 2020; Ardington,
Wills and Kotze, 2021; Van der Berg et al., 2022). This report constitutes the first attempt at investigating how these outcomes affected broader system performance in terms of key outcomes such as learner flows through the system, matric results, and performance in school-based assessments (SBAs). The report also sheds light on some important other education issues.

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February 2, 2023 By: Servaas van der Berg, Chris van Wyk, Rebecca Selkirk, Herman Meyer, Heleen Hofmeyr, Eldridge Moses and Joel Gondwe PDF

RESEP researchers launch Roots & Shoots study

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.

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October 13, 2022 By: Heleen Hofmeyr PDF