An Overview of South Africa’s Schooling System

1. An Overview of South Africa’s Schooling System NicSpaull.com IPSU – Economic and Development Problems in Africa| 25 February 2014

2. Outline Recurring themes I want you to notice • Access/quantity vs quality • Is it an accountability or a capacity constraint/solution? • Status quos are usually equilibria – i.e. we have what we have (and it stays what it is) for a reason Main issues to be covered: • SA performs extremely poorly on local and international assessments of educational achievement • In large parts of the schooling system there is little learning taking place • In SA we have TWO public schooling systems, not one. • Selected issues – teacher content knowledge, textbook availability (SMS) • Accountability & Capacity • Binding constraints

3. Social Policy & Education Firstly, what is social policy? “Social policy primarily refers to the guidelines, principles, legislation and activities that affect the living conditions conducive to human welfare” “Public policy and practice in the areas of health care, human services, criminal justice, inequality, education, and labour” “Social Policy is defined as actions that affect the well-being of members of a society through shaping the distribution of and access to goods and resources in that society”

4. Social Policy & Education • Secondly, how does education fit into it? • Most areas of social policy influence education (in some way), and are influenced by education (in some way) • Bidirectional causality  • Multiple benefits of education…

5. $ Benefits of education Ed H S Ec • Improved human rights • Empowerment of women • Reduced societal violence • Promotion of a national (as opposed to regional or ethnic) identity • Increased social cohesion • Lower fertility • Improved child health • Preventative health care • Demographic transition • Improvements in productivity • Economic growth • Reduction of inter-generational cycles of poverty • Reductions in inequality Economy Health Society Specific references: lower fertility (Glewwe, 2002), improved child health (Currie, 2009), reduced societal violence (Salmi, 2006), promotion of a national - as opposed to a regional or ethnic - identity (Glewwe, 2002), improved human rights (Salmi, 2006), increased social cohesion (Heyneman, 2003), Economic growth – see any decent Macro textbook, specifically for cognitive skills see (Hanushek & Woessman 2008)

6. Social Policy & Education • Secondly, how does education fit into it? • Education itself affects society & the individual in real and meaningful ways: • Transforms individual capabilities, values, aspirations and desires (see Sen) • Allows individuals to think, feel and act in different ways • Enables new ways of organizing and supporting social action that depend on numeracy and literacy, technologies of communication and abstract thinking skills (Lewin, 2007). Democratic participation, knowledge creation etc. • Education increases peoples ability to add value (productivity) • “Modernising societies use educational access and attainment as a primary mechanism to sort and select subsequent generations into different social and economic roles” (Lewin, 2007: 3) Distribution of income

7. Theory: Human Capital Education increases peoples ability to add value (productivity)  HCM + =   “The failure to treat human resources explicitly as a form of capital, as a produced means of production, as the product of investment, has fostered the retention of the classical notion of labour as a capacity to do manual work requiring little knowledge and skill, a capacity with which, according to this notion, labourers are endowed about equally. This notion of labour was wrong in the classical period and it is patently wrong now. Counting individuals who can and want to work and treating such a count as a measure of the quantity of an economic factor is no more meaningful than it would be to count the number of all manner of machines to determine their economic importance” (Schultz, 1961, p. 3). Incr wage Incr MP of L Man Skills & health Incr profits

8. Theory: Sorting & signalling • Education does not improve productivity or produce HC, instead acts as a signal of innate productivity/IQ/motivation. • Those with higher productivity/IQ/motivation will find it easier to get higher levels of education than those with lower P/IQ/M • Do we care if it is HCM or Signalling? • Yes! Implications for public investment.

9. Elusive equity • Given the strong links between education and income, educational inequality is a fundamental determinant of income inequality. • Clear need to understand SA educational inequality if we are to understand SA income inequality. • High inequality + unemployment 2 of the most severe problems facing SA • Educational quality is intimately intertwined with both of these. • “Education shall be free, compulsory, universal and equal for all children” (Freedom Charter)

10. Elusive equity • IQ • Motivation • Social networks • Discrimination

11. Theory – education in SA • Type of tertiary education (quality) - institution and field of study • Demand and supply • Individual motivation • Parental IQ (assortative mating) • Maternal health • Nutrition • Early cognitive stimulation: preschool (quantity & quality), home environment South Africa • Average school SES • Language of learning & teaching (LOLT) • Teacher quality • Peer effects • Subject choice • Cost of tertiary education (explicit & implicit costs) • Parental & personal aspirations and perceptions • Society/culture (See Taylor, 2010)

12. South Africa For UK

13. Labour Market • University/FET • Type of institution (FET or University) • Quality of institution • Type of qualification(diploma, degree etc.) • Field of study (Engineering, Arts etc.) • High productivity jobs and incomes (17%) • Mainly professional, managerial & skilled jobs • Requires graduates, good quality matric or good vocational skills • Historically mainly white High quality secondaryschool Unequal society High SES background +ECD High quality primary school Minority (20%) Some motivated, lucky or talented students make the transition • Vocational training • Affirmative action • Big demand for good schools despite fees • Some scholarships/bursaries Majority (80%) Quality Type Attainment Low quality secondary school • Low productivity jobs & incomes • Often manual or low skill jobs • Limited or low quality education • Minimum wage can exceed productivity Low SES background Low quality primary school cf. Servaas van der Berg – QLFS 2011

14. Qualifications by age (birth cohort), 2011 (Van der Berg, 2013)

15. Expenditure on education2010/11 Government exp on education (19.5% of Gov exp: R143.1bn) Total government expenditure (31% GDP in 2010/11 – R733.5bn) 17% 5%

16. 1) South Africa performs extremely poorly on local and international assessments of educational achievement

17. State of SA education since transition • “Although 99.7% of South African children are in school…the outcomes in education are abysmal” (Manuel, 2011) • “Without ambiguity or the possibility of misinterpretation, the pieces together reveal the predicament of South African primary education” (Fleisch, 2008: 2) • “Our researchers found that what students know and can do is dismal” (Taylor & Vinjevold, 1999) • “It is not an overstatement to say that South African education is in crisis.” (Van der Berg & Spaull, 2011)

18. Student performance 2003-2011 prePIRLS(2011) TIMSS (2011) ANA (2011) TIMSS (2003)  PIRLS (2006) SACMEQ (2007) TIMSS 2003 (Gr8 Maths & Science) • Out of 50 participating countries (including 6 African countries) SA came last • Only 10% reached low international benchmark • No improvement from TIMSS 1999-TIMSS 2003 PIRLS 2006(Gr 4/5 – Reading) • Out of 45 participating countries SA came last • 87% of gr4 and 78% of Gr 5 learners deemed to be “at serious risk of not learning to read” SACMEQ III 2007(Gr6 – Reading & Maths) • SA came 10/15 for reading and 8/15 for maths behind countries such as Swaziland, Kenya and Tanzania ANA 2011 (Gr 1-6 Reading & Maths) • Mean literacy score gr3: 35% • Mean numeracy score gr3: 28% • Mean literacy score gr6: 28% • Mean numeracy score gr6: 30% TIMSS 2011(Gr9 – Maths & Science) • SA has joint lowest performance of 42 countries • Improvement by 1.5 grade levels (2003-2011) • 76% of grade nine students in 2011 still had not acquired a basic understanding about whole numbers, decimals, operations or basic graphs, and this is at the improved level of performance prePIRLS2011 (Gr 4 Reading) • 29% of SA Gr4 learners completely illiterate (cannot decode text in any langauge) • NSES 2007/8/9 • Systemic Evaluations 2007 • Matric exams

19. Quantifying learning deficits in Gr3 Figure 1: Kernel density of mean Grade 3 performance on Grade 3 level items by quintiles of student socioeconomic status (Systemic Evaluation 2007) • Following Muralidharan & Zieleniak (2013) we classify students as performing at the grade-appropriate level if they obtain a mean score of 50% or higher on the full set of Grade 3 level questions. (Grade-3-appropriate level) 16% Only the top 16%of grade 3 students are performing at a Grade 3 level 51% 11%

20. NSES question 42NSESfollowed about 15000 students (266 schools) and tested them in Grade 3 (2007), Grade 4 (2008) and Grade 5 (2009). Grade 3 maths curriculum: “Can perform calculations using appropriate symbols to solve problems involving: division of at least 2-digit by 1-digit numbers” Even at the end of Grade 5 most (55%+) quintile 1-4 students cannot answer this simple Grade-3-level problem. “The powerful notions of ratio, rate and proportion are built upon the simpler concepts of whole number, multiplication and division, fraction and rational number, and are themselves the precursors to the development of yet more complex concepts such as triangle similarity, trigonometry, gradient and calculus” (Taylor & Reddi, 2013: 194) (Spaull & Viljoen, forthcoming)

21. By Gr 3 all children should be able to read, Gr 4 children should be transitioning from “learning to read” to “reading to learn” Red sections here show the proportion of children that are completely illiterate in Grade 4 , i.e. they cannot read in any language http://web.up.ac.za/sitefiles/File/publications/2013/PIRLS_2011_Report_12_Dec.PDF

22. SACMEQ 2007 – Grade 6 By this definition of functional illiteracy, if students are functionally illiterate they cannot read a short and simple text and extract meaning  i.e. they cannot read for meaning

23. Grade 6 Literacy SA Gr 6 Literacy Kenya Gr 6 Literacy 2% 5% 7% 25% 49% 46% 39% Public current expenditure per pupil: $258 Public current expenditure per pupil: $1225 Additional resources is not the answer 27%

24. 2) In large parts of the schooling system there is little learning taking place

25. Rationale • Learning is a cumulative process that builds on itself i.e. it follows a hierarchical structure (see Gagne, 1962; Aubrey, Dahl, & Godfrey, 2006; Aubrey & Godfrey, 2003; Aunio & Niemivirta, 2010). • Mathematics, in particular, follows a coherent, explicit and systematically principled structure (vertically integrated subject – Bernstein, 1999) • With respect to South Africa, Taylor et al. (2003, p. 129): “At the end of the Foundation Phase, learners have only a rudimentary grasp of the principles of reading and writing... it is very hard for learners to make up this cumulative deficit in later years...particularly in those subjects that...[have] vertical demarcation requirements (especially mathematics and science), the sequence, pacing, progression and coverage requirements of the high school curriculum make it virtually impossible for learners who have been disadvantaged by their early schooling to ‘catch-up’ later sufficiently to do themselves justice at the high school exit level.” (see also Schollar, 2008)

26. Insurmountable learning deficits: 0.3 SD (Spaull & Viljoen, Forthcoming)

27. What are the implications for matric and then the labour market?

28. 550,000 students drop out before matric • 99% do not get a non-matric qualification (Gustafsson, 2011: p11) • What happens to them? 50% youth unemployment.

29. Dropoutbetween Gr8 and Gr12 • Of 100 Gr8 quintile 1 students in 2009, 36 passed matric and 10 qualified for university • Of 100 Gr8 quintile 5 students in 2009, 68 passed matric and 39 qualified for university • “Contrary to what some would like the nation and the public to believe that our results hide inequalities, the facts and evidence show that the two top provinces (Free State and North West) are rural and poor.” (Motshekga, 2014)

30. What are the root causes of low and unequal achievement? Matric pass rate Subject choice Throughput No. endorsements Media sees only this MATRIC Quality? Pre-MATRIC 50% dropout Low curric coverage Low accountability Weak culture of T&L Vested interests Low time-on-task No early cognitive stimulation Low quality teachers HUGE learning deficits…

32. South African teacher content knowledge CAPACITY

33. Importance of basic content knowledge • Mathematics teachers need “a thorough mastery of the mathematics in several grades beyond that which they expect to teach, as well as of the mathematics in earlier grades” (Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences, 2001, ch.2). • Carnoy& Chisholm’s (2008: p. 22) conceptual model distinguishes between basic content knowledge and higher level content knowledge.

34. Maths teacher CK critically low Which content areas do South African teachers struggle with?

35. Maths teacher CK critically low

36. What do South African teachers know relative to other teachers in Africa?

37. SACMEQ III (2007) Mathematics-teacher mathematics test-scores for SACMEQ countries and South African quintiles of school wealth (95% confidence interval incl.)

38. Conclusions Ball et al (2008, p. 409): “Teachers who do not themselves know the subject well are not likely to have the knowledge they need to help students learn this content. At the same time just knowing a subject may well not be sufficient for teaching.”

39. 3) In South Africa we have TWO public schooling systems not one

40. BimodalityNSES Grade 4 (2008)

41. Bimodality – indisputable fact PIRLS/ TIMSS/ SACMEQ/ NSES/ ANA/ Matric… by Wealth/ Language/ Location/ Dept…

42.  In most government reports outcomes and inputs are not usually reported by quintile, only national averages 

43. Implications for reporting and modeling??

44. 2 education systems

45. SOLUTION? Accountability AND Capacity

46. Important distinctions Often these 3 are spoken about interchangeably

47. Important distinctions Inefficiency / corruption

48. Important distinctions Inefficiency / corruption Lack of capacity

49. Important distinctions Inefficiency / corruption Lack of capacity Lack of accountability

50. Accountability & Capacity