Does higher education expenditure generate higher learner achievement? A study of historically disadvantaged schools in Gauteng

There is a growing body of research that examines the relationship between learner achievement and the resource characteristics of educators. To help policy-makers and researchers use and build on this body of knowledge, I analyse the relationship between six measures of educator and educator-related characteristics: learner-educator ratios, per learner personnel costs, average educator costs, educator qualifications, educator years of experience, and percentage of temporary teachers in a school, using two years of data (1999 and 2002) in the province of Gauteng. The implications of the indeterminate findings in the light of the limitation of the study are detailed and directions for future research are proposed. South African Journal of Education Vol.24(4) 2004: 264-26

Social scientists as policy makers: E. G. Malherbe and the National Bureau for Educational and Social Research, 1929-1943

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 8 March, 1993.This essay is a history of the origin, elaboration and implementation of this politics of knowledge in the National Bureau of Educational and Social Research. Established in 1929 as an information gathering and research division within the South African Union Department of Education, the Bureau became the center of the development of a new relationship between social science and policy in South Africa. Four years after it was founded the Bureau's potential influence increased with the substantial grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. This foreign funding would enable the Bureau to sponsor, conduct, and publish social science research, as well as to build a national library on educational and social sciences. Although temporarily closed in 1940 for the duration of the Second World War, the Bureau continued to exert influence on State policy until its incorporation into the Human Sciences Research Council in 196

Bureaucratic accountability in the education action zones of South Africa

The Education Action Zone program me in Gauteng p rovince, South A frica, has been w idely seen as a very successful school improvement initiative, with particular significance as it represents a unique model of top-down, bureaucratic accountability as a vehicle for turning- around dysfunctional secondary schools. In this article I evaluate the impact of the initiative through an analysis of the senior secondary examination results for 1999 –20 02, in the 70 schools involved in the programme. It was found that the EAZ schools made significant gains in the overall pass rate, university pass rates, number of 'A' symbols, and average mark. The results of comparative analysis confirmed the overall success of the programme. However an alternative explanation raised ques tions about the mechanisms of improvement by uncovering a relationship between gains in examination results and learner exclusion. Keywords: education action zone, learner exclusion, school improvement, school intervention programmes South African Journal of Education Vol. 26(3) 2006: 369–38

The Constitution in the Classroom: Law and Education in South Africa 1994 - 2008

About the publication The law on education and educational practices in South Africa would exhaust the capacity of any meaningful monograph. Instead, the authors of this book engage six discrete topics that refl ect the broader currents and conflicts in South African education debates: (a) school choice; (b) school fees; (c) the right to an adequate basic education; (d) single medium public schools; (e) school governing bodies; and (f) independent schools. The book has two further aims. First: To move beyond the debates taking place separately in the education policy community and the legal academy, and to demonstrate how these disciplines, working in concert with each other, can advance our understanding of law and education in South Africa. Second: To show that the ANC’s complex education agenda must mirror the egalitarian, utilitarian, democratic, and communitarian commitments found within the Constitution. How these competing political claims refl ected in our basic law play themselves out in the enabling education legislation, the case law and government education policy, frames each topic assayed in this work. About the editor: Stu Woolman is the Academic Director at the South Africa Institute for Advanced Constitutional, Public, Human Rights and International Law. Brahm Fleisch is Associate Professor in the Division of Education Leadership and Policy Studies in Wits School of Education.Publishe

Identifying mechanisms of change in the Early Grade Reading Study in South Africa

The Grade 2 learner results of the Early Grade Reading Study (EGRS) randomised control trial (RCT) in the North West province showed that the structured pedagogic intervention model that included instructional coaching, lesson plans, and quality learning materials was more cost-effective than a similar intervention model that excluded coaching. These results are read against the growing body of literature that questions the value of RCTs in identifying mechanisms of change. For this reason, two small-scale qualitative case studies were undertaken to identify the difficulty in detecting workings of classroom practice that RCTs cannot show. Three mechanisms of change: the organisation of space, time, and implementation of routines drawn from the work of Foucault, were analysed to interpret observed changes to teacher practice and some of the weaknesses in the EGRS programme.Keywords: early grade reading; Foucault; qualitative case study; RCT

Curriculum Reform, Assessment and National Qualifications Frameworks

This background paper engages with issues of secondary education reform in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) since 2007 and uses the MasterCard framework of questions as a template for gathering evidence. The framework seeks answers in three broad areas of reform: curriculum, assessment/examination systems and national qualifications frameworks (NQFs). It specifically invited responses to the following questions: Curriculum- What kinds of curriculum reform have occurred in SSA since 2007?- How successful has the practical implementation of new curricula been?- Given the challenges, how can resource-constrained ministries implement curriculum reform?- To what extent has a/the new curriculum promoted 21st century skills (like creativity, critical thinking, cognitive flexibility and emotional intelligence), as well as employability and entrepreneurial skills? Assessment- How successful has assessment reform been? National Qualifications Framework - What is the status of implementation of NQFs across SSA?- Have the approaches to NQF implementation promoted learning and the acquisition of skills necessary for employment?To ensure greater inclusivity, and to solicit a wide range of perspectives, we have chosen to review as broad a spectrum of publications as possible. This has meant that we have included research papers that, more often than not, would have been excluded from similar types of reviews. These include graduate students' masters and doctoral theses; and research papers published in journals that are not widely recognised. The net effect of widening the pool of sources is that many more researchers from, and working in, institutions on the continent have been referenced or included in the bibliography. The evidence gathering processes involved six linked activities: x Setting the search parameters and undertaking an electronic search. vi x Reviewing the document titles and abstracts; and sifting and excluding nonrelevant documents. x Once the primary and secondary sources have been identified, using high frequency citations to identify researchers in the field for follow up processes. x Reviewing the wider scholarship of identified scholars to gather additional 'grey' literature. x Identifying case studies, based on the analysis of these preliminary sources. x Site visits and case study write-ups Two system case studies were selected for close analysis: South Africa and Ethiopia. South Africa was selected because of its experience of three separate waves of curriculum reform in the past two decades, the extensive documentation of these curriculum reforms and as one of the first systems in the world to have introduced a national qualifications framework. Ethiopia was selected as it represents a rapidly developing country in which secondary education is likely to play a key role. It was also selected because of its recent review of its secondary education curriculum and examination system

The value of large-scale randomised control trials in system-wide improvement: The case of the Reading Catch-Up Programme

This article illustrates the value of large-scale impact evaluations with counterfactual components. It begins by exploring the limitations of small-scale impact studies, which do not allow reliable inference to a wider population or which do not use valid  comparison groups. The paper then describes the design features of a recent  large-scale randomised control trial (RCT) evaluation of an intermediate phase literacy intervention that we evaluated. Using a rigorous sampling process and randomised  assignment, the paper shows the value of the approach, and how the RCT method  prevents researchers from reaching potentially harmful false positive findings. The paper also considers some of the limitations of the RCT method and makes  recommendations to mitigate these.Keywords: impact evaluation, intermediate phase literacy; Randomised Control Tria

Children's daily travel to school in Johannesburg-Soweto, South Africa: geography and school choice in the Birth to Twenty cohort study

This paper has two aims: to explore approaches to the measurement of children’s daily travel to school in a context of limited geospatial data availability, and to provide data regarding school choice and distance travelled to school in Soweto-Johannesburg, South Africa. The paper makes use of data from the Birth to Twenty cohort study (n=1428) to explore three different approaches to estimating school choice and travel to school. Firstly, straight-line distance between home and school is calculated. Secondly, census geography is used to determine whether a child's home and school fall in the same area. Thirdly, distance data are used to determine whether a child attends the nearest school. Each of these approaches highlights a different aspect of mobility, and all provide valuable data. Overall, primary school aged children in Soweto-Johannesburg are shown to be travelling substantial distances to school on a daily basis. Over a third travel more than 3km, one-way, to school, 60% attend schools outside of the suburb in which they live, and only 18% attend their nearest school. These data provide evidence for high levels of school choice in Johannesburg-Soweto, and that families and children are making substantial investments in pursuit of high quality educational opportunities. Additionally, these data suggest that two patterns of school choice are evident: one pattern involving travel of substantial distances and requiring a higher level of financial investment, and a second pattern, involving choice between more local schools, requiring less travel and a more limited financial investment

Multilingual examinations: towards a schema of politicization of language in end of high school examinations in sub-Saharan Africa

In many countries of sub-Saharan Africa, the release of each year’s results for the end of high school examinations heralds an annual ritual of public commentary on the poor state of national education systems. However, the exoglossic/monolingual language regime for these examinations is infrequently acknowledged as contributing to the dismal performance of students. Even less attended to is the manner in which the language of examinations, through shaping students’ performances, may be exacerbating social inequalities. This article politicizes the language of examinations in the region in the hope of generating policy and research interest in what is arguably an insidious source of inequality. The article makes three arguments. Firstly, it is argued that current exoglossic/monolingual practices in these examinations constitute a set of sociolinguistic aberrations, with demonstrable negative effects on students’ performance. Secondly, it is argued that the gravity of these paradoxical sociolinguistic disarticulations is better appreciated when their social ramifications are viewed in terms of structural violence and social inequality. Thirdly, in considering how to evolve a more socially equitable examination language regime, it is argued that the notion of consequential validity in testing positions translanguaging as a more ecologically valid model of language use in examinations

African Linguistics in Central and Eastern Europe, and in the Nordic Countries

Non peer reviewe