Learning pathways and system performance in South Afican schools

South Africa’s administrative education data provide an important window into how learners move through the system, where they encounter difficulties, and how policies are implemented in practice. The analyses in this report draw on several large datasets to examine learner flows, early schooling patterns, Mathematics pathways, teacher supply pressures and absenteeism. Across these areas, two themes recur. The first is the persistence of deep inequalities in learning opportunities and progression. The second is the wide variation in how national policies are interpreted, recorded and acted on across provinces and between fee-paying and non-fee-paying schools. These variations have important implications for both system performance and the reliability of the administrative data used to monitor it.