Events surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic threatened to undo 20 years of sustained expansion in access to early childhood care and education (ECCE) in South Africa. In this paper, we explore the underlying structural weaknesses in non-grade R ECCE provisioning that were exposed through the pandemic, and the strengths that have surfaced.
Working Papers
Introduction As a positive relationship between schools and education districts can help to secure school improvement and learning outcomes, we have explored the accountability arrangements…
RESEP research associate, Tia Linda Zuze recently wrote an opinion article that was published on the news site News24. The piece details the essential contributions of women who have been tackling the Covid pandemic in terms of research and policy.
We use Benford’s Law to investigate inaccurate financial reports of a representative sample of Ugandan nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). We find that 25% of the sample provided information that did not conform to the Benford distribution, suggesting potential misreporting.
To illustrate the performance of South Africa’s public school system, RESEP developed the below interactive map with the assistance of the Centre for Geographic Analysis at Stellenbosch University.
A PART OF THE ECD WORKING PAPER SERIES BETWEEN ILIFA LABANTWANA & RESEP. NO. ECD WP 003/2021
Enrolment in early childhood care and education programmes in South Africa: challenges and opportunities
A part of the ECD Working Paper Series between Ilifa Labantwana & Resep. No. ECD WP 002/2021The Ilifa-Resep ECD Working Paper Series is a collaboration between Ilifa Labantwana and Research on Socio-Economic Policy (RESEP) at Stellenbosch University. The working paper series aims to promote research that addresses the major systemic issues facing the ECD sector in South Africa.
Estimating the impact of five early childhood development programmes against a counterfactual
A part of the ECD Working Paper Series between Ilifa Labantwana & RESEP. No. ECD WP 001/2021The Ilifa-Resep ECD Working Paper Series is a collaboration between Ilifa Labantwana and Research on Socio-Economic Policy (Resep) at Stellenbosch University. The working paper series aims to promote research that addresses the major systemic issues facing the ECD sector in South Africa.
Prospects of low voter turnout and ongoing protest about the quality of service delivery should be no surprise, according to a new study. Tina Fransman, a PhD student in Economics at Stellenbosch University, working with Dr Marisa von Fintel, one of her supervisors, explored the relationship between public service delivery, voting in elections and protest behaviour in South Africa.
Voting and protest tendencies associated with changes in service delivery.
Citizens ought to hold the state accountable for service delivery. This is usually done through the power of the vote. Literature on democratic governance suggests that theoretically, when good quality public services are provided, citizens would continue to vote for the political party in power. Therefore, it is expected that the inverse would occur should poor quality public services be provided.Citizens ought to hold the state accountable for service delivery. This is usually done through the power of the vote. Literature on democratic governance suggests that theoretically, when good quality public services are provided, citizens would continue to vote for the political party in power. Therefore, it is expected that the inverse would occur should poor quality public services be provided.
Using three different studies on early grade reading from no-fee schools across in South Africa, this paper establishes short-term learning losses in reading for grade 2 and 4 students from under-resourced school contexts. We find that in 2020 grade 2 students lost between 57 % and 70 % of a year of learning relative to their pre-pandemic peers.
In this paper, we investigate the existence of geographical correlations in OOP health expenditures by employing a spatial Durbin model on data from 778 clusters obtained from the 2016 Malawi’s Integrated Household Survey.
A paper composed by early career researchers at RESEP, Martin Mwale and Dr Martina Mchenga, and their co-author Dr Gowokani Chirwa, has recently been published in a highly ranked international journal.
The report analyses school flows, repetition, and dropout using a novel analysis of school-based assessments, and how well these predict future performance and learner flows. An important finding is that the high repetition and dropout rates in high schools imply an internal efficiency rate of only 49% (measured in terms of the years of enrolment in high school for every matric pass).
Teacher supply and demand is a complex matter. The ultimate aim is to have a teacher in front of every class, now and for the foreseeable future. This also implies an ideal class size. The quality of teachers is obviously important too – and a topic for another occasion.
As Visiting Fellow with the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) at Rhodes University, Martin Gustafsson recently produced a policy and literature review titled ‘Carbon taxes and the attainment of emissions reductions targets in South Africa: A critical stocktaking of recent analyses and policies’.
A new paper on COVID-19 learning losses in South Africa has been published in the International Journal of Educational Development.
STIAS, Stellenbosch 30 June 2020
STIAS, Stellenbosch 23 June 2020