
President Ramaphosa announced on 15 March that schools would close within days for just over three weeks, as opposed to the originally planned one week of school holidays. This is in line with steps taken across the world to reduce the spread of the new coronavirus. This is a sudden change of plan, and closures may be extended. What should South Africans look out for? What can they do to limit the adverse effects of this disruption on education?

On the 20th and 21st of February 2020, RESEP convened a workshop on education research with participation from academics from the University of Bristol (UK), the University of Bath (UK), the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (India), and Tribhuvan University (Nepal), as well as key policymakers and researchers from the DBE.

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%.

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.