This policy brief compares educational progress among South African girls across the socioeconomic spectrum to shed some light on which girls are actually succeeding academically and which ones are being left behind.
June 7, 2020 PDF
Working Papers
Gabrielle Wills and Servaas van der Berg explore the development and trial of new metrics to quantify school leadership and management practices and/or processes considered to be theoretically related to literacy outcomes.
May 27, 2020 PDF
Wills, G. and van der Berg, S., 2020. Measuring school leadership and management and linkages with literacy: Evidence from rural and township primary schools in South Africa. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, p.1741143220915923.
May 26, 2020 PDF
I use the latest (16 May) version of the OxCGRT dataset to answer three fairly common questions about COVID-19 in the South African context. The three questions are: (1) Is South Africa’s curve a relatively flat one? (2.) Does South Africa have ‘one of the toughest lockdowns on earth’? (3.) How do restrictions and ‘flattening the curve’ relate to each other, and where does South Africa fit in?
May 20, 2020 PDF
Good policymaking requires reliable, comparable statistics over time. Despite there being an annual survey of agricultural firms in South Africa, confusion exists about the number of commercial farms in South Africa and the structure of the agricultural sector. According to the agricultural census in 2007, there were 39 966 commercial farms, while the agricultural survey mentions a figure of 64 192 and 57 126 in 2008 and 2017, respectively. With such diverging numbers across time, which figures should we trust and how does one analyse trends in the sector and make evidence-based decisions?
May 19, 2020 PDF
This paper presents new evidence on the employment effects of a large increase in agricultural minimum wages in South Africa using anonymized tax data.
May 18, 2020 PDF
Von Fintel, D. and Orthofer, A., 2020. Wealth inequality and financial inclusion: Evidence from South African tax and survey records. Economic Modelling.
May 18, 2020 PDF
Piek, M. and von Fintel, D., 2020. Sectoral minimum wages in South Africa: Disemployment by firm size and trade exposure. Development Southern Africa, 37(3), pp.462-482.
May 18, 2020 PDF
It is critical that the debates leading up to the re-opening of South Africa’s schools, and the actual process of re-opening, which will almost certainly occur in stages, be informed by the emerging medical evidence and reports on best school practices. Re-opening the pre-school sector, covering around 2.4 million children, and the earliest school grades, seems least risky in terms of infections. Moreover, there are strong educational and nutritional arguments which favour prioritising these levels.
May 12, 2020 PDF
Who should go back to school first in South Africa? Children under 10 are least susceptible to COVID-19, they should go back first. Spaull,…
May 10, 2020 PDF
Many have to fall back on that familiar South African last resort, the extended family. It will take some time before the full effect of Covid-19, the lockdown and recession will be clear, writes Servaas van der Berg.
May 9, 2020 PDF
This week researchers at Stellenbosch University launched the Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (CRAM), a collaborative research project across five universities which will track the social and economic impacts of COVID-19 in South Africa. The study will survey a nationally representative sample of 10,000 South Africans every month for the next six months using telephone surveys with R20 airtime incentives per respondent per wave. The survey will focus on unemployment, household income, access to healthcare, child hunger and access to government grants.
May 8, 2020 PDF
International Tests: What are they and why should South Africa participate? South Africa takes part in three major international assessments: TIMSS, PIRLS and SEACMEQ. This…
May 6, 2020 PDF
Language-in-education policy has a powerful influence on social and economic relations, with complex dimensions in multilingual and unequal societies such as South Africa.
May 6, 2020 PDF
Perseverance, Passion, and Poverty: Examining the association between grit and reading achievement in high-poverty schools
Stellenbosch Working Paper Series No. WP06/2020This paper examines whether school characteristics moderate the association between grit and reading achievement in a sample of Grade 6 learners in high-poverty contexts.
April 20, 2020 PDF
Using a dataset known as the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT), RESEP’s Martin Gustafsson assesses the South African response to COVID-19 relative to that of 139 other nations.
April 17, 2020 PDF
How does South Africa’s Covid-19 response compare globally? A preliminary analysis using the new OxCGRT dataset A 19 May 2020 update of aspects of…
April 17, 2020 PDF
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?
March 25, 2020 PDF
The coronavirus pandemic working its way through South African society will have many knock-on effects, one of them will be hunger and malnutrition as 9-million children no longer receive free school meals while their schools are shut.
March 23, 2020 PDF
RESEP’s Ronelle Burger today published an article in the Daily Maverick calling for South African’s to stand together and adhere to the President’s recent announcements on precautionary measures to stem the spread of the Coronavirus.
March 19, 2020 PDF
