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Stellenbosch Working Papers

Working Papers

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 002/2021

The 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.

November 23, 2021 By: Eldridge Moses PDF

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 001/2021

The 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.

November 23, 2021 By: Servaas van der Berg PDF

Are protests replacing voting as mechanism to hold government  accountable?

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.

October 28, 2021 By: RESEP Team PDF

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.

October 27, 2021 By: Tina Fransman PDF

COVID-19 learning losses: Early grade reading in South Africa

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.

October 18, 2021 By: Cally Ardington, Gabrielle Wills, and Janeli Kotze PDF

Learner flows through schools: Using high quality administrative data to understand education system performance

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).

September 17, 2021 By: Servaas van der Berg, Chris van Wyk, Rebecca Selkirk, and Heleen Hofmeyr PDF