• Nic Spaull & Adaiah Lilenstein

Let us start our foray into this year’s education budget by considering blessings and curses. Given the times that we are in there is one English ‘blessing’ that is especially apt: “May you live in interesting times.” It’s also claimed that this is actually a traditional Chinese curse, and that life is better during “uninteresting times” of peace and prosperity than in “interesting” ones which are usually times of trouble. However you spin it, we are in very interesting times.

In the 2021 budget, public sector wages make up R650-billion or a third of the total budget. Because there are more teachers (407,000) than any other kind of public servant, teacher salaries are the largest single line item in the entire budget and make up a third (R208-billion) of all public sector wages.  That’s 4,1% of GDP. For the second year teacher salaries in South Africa will decline in real terms. The 2021 budget showed that salaries in basic education increased by only 1.4% (from R205-billion to R208-billion), and given that inflation was about 3,3% in 2020, that’s a 1.9% decline in real terms. That sounds like a bad thing, but it’s worth putting this in historical perspective – both politically and economically.

Exactly one year ago, the Confederation of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) threatened to “collapse the public service” and “part ways” with government if Treasury did not honor it’s 7% wage increase. Treasury explained that it could not fulfill other constitutional obligations if it honored that wage agreement, and argued for a public sector wage freeze (the one it then implemented). The courts agreed with Treasury, but the judgement is under appeal in the Constitutional Court (see p.32). As much as the 2021 Budget fuss has been about other issues like provisions for vaccines and higher sin taxes, the real story is the ongoing implementation of the public sector wage freeze.  Public sector wages are the left, right, and center of government spending, government debt, and government’s ruling alliance with COSATU.

In a research paper we released last year we found that between 2008 and 2019 teacher wages increased by an average of 9,2% per year while average inflation was only 6,3% per year.  The only way provinces have coped with higher salaries is to implement hiring freezes leaving schools without principals and heads of departments.

Perhaps this is all a bit abstract for some readers, so let’s talk about monthly salaries. What do teachers actually get paid in South Africa? The common perception is that teacher’s salaries are low. What does the data say? A paper published last year  using government payroll data shows that the average teacher in South Africa was paid about R42,700 a month (including benefits), and the total package for teachers 50 years and older was R47,874 per month or about R575,000 a year (see figure). This is not to say that teachers are overpaid, but rather to highlight that teacher salaries have increased dramatically over the last 10 years, and thus the halt in salary increases along with other wages in the public sector is apt.

Figure 1: Monthly teacher pay in South Africa according to 2019 government payroll data

(Source: Gustafsson & Maponya, 2020)

In our view, given the circumstances in South Africa – not only the need to fund vaccines and their rollout, but also to address chronic unemployment and hunger – it is fair and reasonable to implement a wage freeze. The unemployment rate for those aged 15-24 years is now 63% according to the latest StatsSA survey. While we do need more money to go into education, it is not in the form of further salary increases for teachers. Class sizes are set to expand, and pressure on non-personnel spending (like books) is also rising. We need to hire and train unemployed youth-with-matric as Teacher Assistants (R3,600 per month) and make sure all kids have books. These TA’s can be allocated to primary school teachers throughout the country with a special focus on early grade reading and mathematics, thus helping to manage large class sizes and employing 400,000 youth. It’s time to pivot from our old strategy of salary increases for the well-paid and prioritise those who are actually marginalised in society.

—

This article first appeared in the Financial Mail on the 25th of February 2021

Today we launched a report we have been working on for the last 18 months: The Race between Teacher Wages and the Budget: The Case of South Africa 2008-2018 which I wrote with one of my doctoral students (Adaiah Lilenstein) and long time collaborator (David Carel). I include the abstract and executive summary below.

Abstract

In South Africa the wages of school-based personnel (teachers and teacher-managers) make up 3.5% of GDP, the largest single line item in the government budget. In this paper, we analyze a decade’s worth of publicly available data on expenditure, collective bargaining agreements, teacher demographics, and learner enrolment. We show that discounting historical educational expenditures using CPI is naïve when wages make up approximately 80% of the education ‘price basket’ purchased by government. To remedy this we create a sector-specific Basic Education Price Index (BEPI) for South Africa that is weighted by the real cost drivers in education (i.e. ~80% wages and ~20% CPI). Using BEPI we find that there has been a -2.3% decline in real per-learner expenditure over the period 2009-2018 with much larger declines seen in the Free State (-13%), Limpopo (-13%) and the North West (-11%).

Despite a rise in fertility and subsequent enrolment over the period we show that only 30% of the decline is due to the rise in enrolment while 70% is due to the rise in wages. The two main impacts of this real decline in purchasing power is that class sizes have increased and hiring freezes have been implemented. Analysis of government payroll extracts from 2012 and 2016 shows that nationally there were fewer teachers employed (-2%), fewer principals employed (-9%), fewer deputy-principals employed (-8%) and fewer Heads of Department (HODs) employed (-7%), despite there being only -2% fewer schools in 2016 compared to 2012. In Limpopo alone, there were -23% fewer deputy principals in 2016 compared to 2012.

It is uncanny how similar the declines are in per-learner spending between 2009 and 2018 to the declines in the number of principals employed between 2012 and 2016 (the years for which we have PERSAL data). In the Free State per-learner spending declined by -13%, principal posts declined by -14%. In Limpopo per-learner spending declined by -13%, principal posts declined by -13%. In the North West per-learner spending declined by -11%, principal posts declined by -12%.

We conclude by making the case for BEPI being used when analyzing expenditure trends and projections in education. The argument presented throughout the paper is not that educator salaries should not have increased, but rather that there has been a disconnect between government budget allocations and wage and benefit agreements. The longer that wage and benefit increases outpace overall budget increases, the greater the consequences for the education system. Wages must be contained, or educational expenditures must rise, but the status quo is not sustainable for the long-term health of the education system.

 Executive Summary

The aim of the present analysis is to determine how the real resources available to the average child in South Africa have changed over the period 2008 to 2018. In order to do so the paper makes the argument that existing measures of discounting educational expenditures, notably using the Consumer Price Index (CPI) are inadequate, and in our view, incorrect. They drastically over-estimate the rise in real spending on education and do not take into account the overall rise in enrolments resulting from an unusual birth-spike in 2005. Furthermore, such an approach cannot explain why there has been a simultaneous rise in “real spending” coinciding with the widespread implementation of hiring-freezes, a well-known cost-cutting measure implemented by provinces.

To remedy this, we develop the Basic Education Price Index (BEPI) which uses the prices of the real cost drivers of education in South Africa and weights them in the same proportion as that which makes up actual expenditures in the budget (Estimates of Provincial Expenditure and Revenue). Because educator wages – that is, teachers, school managers and administrators – make up approximately 80% of the education budget, changes in educator wages should be used when discounting historical educational expenditures. Put simply, we ask how much it costs to employ 100 teachers in 2008 and 100 teachers in 2018, rather than how the prices of an average basket of consumer goods (CPI) changed over the period (CPI). We argue for a method that uses the actual cost drivers in education and weights the price-basket in the same proportions as they are found in the budget, approximately 80% personnel and 20% non-personnel. Using this new and more appropriate measure, shows that real per-learner spending in South Africa has shrunk by -2,3% between 2009 and 2018, with much higher figures in some provinces.

The five main findings of the paper can be summarized as follows:

1. Clear evidence of a fiscal squeeze: Provinces are clearly facing a ‘fiscal squeeze’ where increases in teacher salaries have outpaced increases in budget allocations to education. While this has led to declines in real per learner spending of -2.3% nationally, this is considerably higher in the Free State (-13%), Limpopo (-12,5%) and the North West (-11%) between 2009 and 2018.
2. Provinces coping using hiring freezes: Provinces seem to be ‘coping’ with this squeeze by implementing cost-saving measures such as hiring freezes and leaving vacant posts unfilled. Unsurprisingly these hiring freezes are largest where the real per-learner declines are greatest. Importantly, hiring freezes are disproportionately affecting school management posts rather than regular teaching posts, although there has been a decline in the latter as well. It is uncanny how similar the declines are in per-learner spending between 2009 and 2018 to the declines in the number of principals employed between 2012 and 2016 (the years for which we have PERSAL data). In the Free State per-learner spending declined by -13%, principal posts declined by -14%. In Limpopo per-learner spending declined by -13%, principal posts declined by -13%. In the North West per-learner spending declined by -11%, principal posts declined by -12%.
3. Historical overestimation of spending on education: We show that any historical analysis that uses CPI to discount educational expenditures overestimates the real spending on education since the real cost drivers have, especially teacher salaries, have been increasing much faster than CPI. In South Africa a traditional approach of using CPI as the discount rate leads one to conclude that ‘real’ aggregate educational expenditures have increased by 42% between 2008 and 2018, when in fact they have only increased by 8% when using the correct discount rate. Furthermore, when comparing 2009 and 2018 using CPI-discounted figures the aggregate increase was 30% when in actual fact it was only 3% when using the correct discount rate. This is primarily because the vast majority of additional educational spending over this period has simply been on paying existing teachers more, rather than hiring more teachers or buying more non-personnel resources.
4. Per-learner figures vs aggregate figures: Much of the existing literature and government reporting is at the aggregate level. Yet the meaningful unit of analysis is the child – what is available to the average child in South Africa? While this may not matter if a population is stable over time, a situation of rising births (as in South Africa) means that resources are being spread over a larger number of children than before. This makes a considerable difference to the conclusion. Between 2009 and 2018 real expenditure on education rose by 3% when looking at the aggregate level and fell by -2.3% when looking at the per-learner level (both using real cost drivers). While there was slightly more money (+3%) being spent on education in 2018 compared to 2009 when looking in the aggregate, for the average child there was slightly less money being spent on them in 2018 compared to 2009.
5. Significant inter-provincial variation in spending per child: It is clear that some provinces spend more public money per child than others, despite alleged equal funding per child in the national funding formulas. For example, Gauteng spent R2,500 more per child per year compared to KwaZulu-Natal or Limpopo (R20,037 in Gauteng compared to R17,563 in KwaZulu-Natal and R17,503 in Limpopo in 2018).

Finally, we argue that the national government has agreed to higher teacher wages and benefits without budgeting for those increases, and in the process undermined the education system. This has led to a host of unintended consequences. Provincial departments experiencing salary increases that have outpaced their budget increases have attempted to deal with the subsequent fiscal squeeze by implementing hiring freezes and allowing class sizes to rise. Payroll data shows that even after accounting for a small decline in the number of schools, there are -7% fewer principals employed in 2016 compared to 2012. In the three most severely affected provinces the declines in employed Principals, Deputy Principals and HODs range from -13% to -23% when comparing 2012 and 2016.

The main contribution of the paper, to both the research literature on South African education, and also to policymakers, is to help explain the conundrum of the co-existence of widespread hiring freezes and the alleged rising per-learner spending on education (using CPI as a deflator).  The answer to this conundrum is that CPI is the wrong deflator for education – both in South Africa and internationally. When using the correct deflator (the Basic Education Price Index) there is a logical explanation behind both increases in class sizes and the implementation of hiring freezes. The provincially devolved nature of South African spending provides further corroborating evidence. Provincial disaggregation of spending trends and hiring freezes shows quite clearly that those provinces experiencing the largest declines in real per learner spending are also the ones who have the highest number of vacancies. This is not a coincidence. For those researchers who are unconvinced that BEPI is the correct discount rate, and instead believe that real education expenditures have been increasing monotonically for the last decade, we ask the following question: If real educational expenditures per learner have been rising over this period, why is it that provinces are implementing hiring freezes?

Finally, we argue that government officials from the National Treasury and the Department of Basic Education need to take account of the dynamics presented in this paper when entering wage negotiation agreements with teacher unions. While many of the choices made in such negotiations are necessarily political, it is fair to ask government to acknowledge the trade-offs and costs in their decisions and to make those trade-offs and decisions public.

The full paper is available here.

(The article first appeared in the Business Day on the 23rd of March 2020 under the title “Government needs to come up with a plan to help poor families now that schools are shut“)

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.

The population of South Africa today is 59-million people, and nearly a quarter are school-going children enrolled in Grades R-12 (13-million kids). One of the under-celebrated achievements of the ANC government over the last ten years has been the mass rollout of a successful school-feeding scheme to all no-fee schools in the country (Quintile 1-3 schools) – The National School Nutrition Programme. To give you a sense of just how vast that network is, of the 13-million kids in school, 9-million receive a free school meal every day they are at school. Put differently, of all the weekday ‘lunches’ eaten in South Africa, one in six are provided in schools under this program.

In order to fund this the government spends R36-million a day to feed these 9-million kids, amounting to R7.2-billion for 2020 according to the most recent budget. The big question now is what happens to those meals and those kids while their schools are shut because of the coronavirus? I’d like to point to what we know about hunger in South Africa, whether the NSNP program is effective, what other countries are doing and what we should be thinking about.

Firstly, South African schools were going to shut for the first term holidays anyway – we just closed them three days early. The Minister announced that schools will be closed until 14 April 2020, and if you count the school holidays and public holidays in that period there are only 11 school days (even though schools are closed for a whole month). While that might not sound like a lot, any extension of school closures (which seem almost inevitable now) will materially start to affect children’s nutrition, and for some kids, also their immune systems.

The nationally-representative 2018 General Household Survey can help shine some light on the extent of hunger in South Africa. Three stats are telling: (1) When asked “Did your household run out of money to buy food during the past 12 months?”, 22% of households answered “yes.” (2) For households where was at least one child (17 years or younger), 16% reported that in the last year a child went hungry in that household “because there wasn’t enough food.” And (3) according to the StatsSA 2018 GHS report of 2018, 20% of households had “inadequate” or “severely inadequate” food access (p.67). So, even with the NSNP in full-swing, and 9-million kids getting their meals Monday to Friday, the GHS shows that about one in six South African households with kids experience hunger or food insecurity. Similarly, the National Development Plan (NDP) states that “stunting affects almost one in five children (18%), and…about one in 10 children are underweight” (p.299).

There is also corroborating evidence from a 2016 evaluation of the National School Nutrition Programme by JET Education Services. They surveyed 267 schools in 2015 and found that 4% of learners “did not eat at home last night” and 23% “did not eat breakfast.” (JET, 2016: p.58). Encouragingly, 96% of schools did actually serve the main meal indicating that the program is working very well.

South Africa is not the only country experiencing this problem. According to UNESCO over 100 countries have shut all schools as a result of the coronavirus. Most have some form of school feeding system for selected learners and now all are scrambling to find ways of providing meals to those that rely on them. In the US a number of cities have implemented a “grab and go” system, including in New York, Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee and Washington D.C. where distribution points and catchment zones dictate who can collect from where.

There are still no reliable projections as to how the coronavirus outbreak in South Africa will unfold but one thing is certain: there is no world in which the situation in South Africa is less severe in three weeks’ time (when schools are scheduled to re-open) than it is now. If schools are going to be shut for months, then provincial governments need to come up with contingency plans for how they will help poor families provide food for their children. Currently there are no plans in place for sustained school closures. Minister Motshekga has been quoted as saying “We are not going to run special programmes … We won’t be able to do it, so parents must take that responsibility and communities must assist.” If the Department of Basic Education is reneging on its responsibility it should give the school nutrition money to a department that is willing and able to come up with a solution. When one in five children are hungry and rely on these meals for their basic needs, it is clear that free school meals have become part of the social infrastructure that millions of South African children rely on. We cannot simply ignore that because of the logistical complexities involved. The money has already been budgeted and allocated, now provinces need to find innovative ways of getting meals to kids while schools are closed.

In 2018 South Africa participated in the OECD’s Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). In SA, 170 high-schools participated in the study and 2,046 teachers from those schools. The aim of the survey, which is nationally representative, is getting accurate and comparable data on the working conditions and learning environments in South African schools, with a special focus on teachers and principals. Here are the three main reports for those interested in digging into the data. It’s difficult to overstate how much valuable information there is in the full OECD report (Volume 1). For any quantitative research students interested in education and thinking about a topic I would strongly recommend looking at the reports and downloading the TALIS 2018 data.

• DBE OECD Note on TALIS 2018 (Summary note)
• OECD TALIS 2018 Report Volume 1 (Full report). Teachers and School Leaders as Lifelong Learners
• OECD TALIS 2018 Technical Report (Preliminary Report)
• TALIS 2018 data (for download)

I’ve included some highlights from the reports below, mainly using graphs taken from the reports…

• Time spent on actual teaching and learning: South African high-school teachers reported that only 66% of their time was spent on actual teaching and learning compared to an average of 78% in the 31 OECD countries.

This is not very surprising and the 66% figure is almost certainly an overestimate given that it is self-reported data from the teachers themselves. In an earlier observational study Carnoy et al (2012) found that at the Grade 6 level only 40% of scheduled lessons for the year were actually taught. Wasted Learning time was one of the four ‘binding constraints‘ we raised in 2016. I include an excerpt from that report:

“In a comprehensive year-long comparative study evaluating 58 schools in the North West province and 58 schools across the border in Botswana, researchers found that of the 130 mathematics lessons scheduled for the year, Grade 6 teachers in the North West had only taught 50 lessons by the beginning of November (Carnoy et al, 2012, p. xvi). This amounts to only 40% of scheduled lessons for the year. By contrast, in Botswana Grade 6 teachers had taught 78 lessons by the beginning of November (60% of scheduled lessons). The researchers note that frequently the problem was not teacher absenteeism but rather a lack of teaching activity despite teacher presence. As the authors note “One of [the reasons] brought up by many North West teachers, is the ‘lack of confidence’ teachers feel in teaching the required elements of the Grade 6 mathematics curriculum. In discussions, teachers attributed this lack of confidence to lacking the knowledge needed to teach the subject” (p. xvi), reflecting the interaction between support and accountability.”

• Gender imbalance between teachers and principals: TALIS 2018 shows that at the high school level 60% of teachers are females but only 20% of principals are female.

Last year Gabi Wills wrote a helpful policy brief on school leadership and management and has a section where she highlights the gendered nature of South African school leadership and management:

“Gender bias in the promotion of female teachers emerges at the middle management level and widens at higher post-levels. In 2016, despite most teachers being women (74%), women only held 63% of HoD posts. At the level of deputy principal, women only held 44% of these posts and a mere 36% of school principal posts as reflected in Figure 3. However, these gaps are driven mostly through secondary school promotion appointments which are more likely to favour men than primary school promotion appointments. There has also been little improvement in gender equality in school promotion. For example, the percentage of principals who were women only improved by 2% points from 34% in 2004 to 36% in 2012” (Wills, 2018).

• Multilingual contexts in South Africa: South Africa had the second largest percentage of students whose first language was different from the language of instruction. (The only country with a higher percentage was the tiny island state of Singapore – to give you a sense, there are only 185 primary schools in Singapore). Drawing attention to the languages that children speak – and the diversity of those languages in SA – is really important.

I have a forthcoming chapter (co-authored with Lilli Pretorius) where we look at early grade reading in African languages. The table below comes from that chapter and shows that Gauteng is very different to the other 8 provinces in South Africa. It also shows that  72% of Gr1-3 learners are in schools where 75%+ learners speak the same language as their home language (in KZN this is 93% and EC it’s 90%).

Those are some thoughts for now. I’d really encourage anyone reading this to delve into the full international reports and figure out what we can learn from these studies. Bravo to the DBE for participating in these types of studies and for their commitment to improving the system based on rigorous evidence emerging from them.

(This article first appeared in the Financial Mail on the 21st of February 2019 under the title “Tablets won’t cure pupil problems“) 

Reading through the Treasury’s meticulous budget documents the contrast between the State of the Nation (SONA) and the Budget becomes starkly apparent. SONA is the aspirational shopping list the President gives the Finance Minister. The Budget is what is actually in the trolley when he walks out the shop. The President can announce whatever he likes but until it manifests in the Budget then it remains in the collective dreamscape of the ANC.

So, it should come as no surprise then that this budget wasn’t a SONA-Budget, it was an Eskom-budget. In a context of low growth and imminent catastrophe there is only so much that can be done. And if you can’t keep the lights on then nothing else matters anyway. Given that others will deal with Eskom, and the big push in infrastructure spending I will focus exclusively on Basic Education.

In short this was a business-as-usual education budget. Most of the sensational elements of the President’s SONA as far as education is concerned were conveniently left out of the budget. There was no mention of one-tablet-per-child and nothing about “two years of compulsory early childhood development (ECD)”. What a relief! There is no evidence that either of these would be a good use of limited funds. One tablet per child policies are universally regarded as being foolish, and have failed in every country they have been implemented, rich or poor. Existing evaluations of our current Grade R year indicate that children don’t actually benefit that much from it because the quality is so low. The received wisdom in the sector is to make Grade R worthwhile before adding on another low-quality questionable-value year of ECD.

To their credit, Treasury has prioritized the eradication of pit latrines in 2,400 schools by allocating an additional R2,8billion over the next three years. Interestingly, these funds won’t be given to provinces to spend – perhaps because the more dysfunctional provinces failed to spend their school infrastructure funds in the past – and instead will be managed nationally by the Department of Basic Education (DBE) and spent “on their behalf” (p.69). Perhaps this is a sign of the political times with a strong-handed national approach rather than the traditional federalist provincial implementation of policies.

While the least feasible (and most expensive) proposals from SONA were ignored, so were the most important and highest impact ones: focusing on fixing early grade reading. In the SONA the President explained that early grade reading “is possibly the single most important factor in overcoming poverty, unemployment and inequality” Well, not according to the Finance Minister because no money was allocated to it. There was no mention of reading at all except for some lip-service about an Early Grade Reading Assessment which is actually a pre-existing initiative and receives less than R10-million per year. This is a shame and represents yet another year that we kick the education can down the road. The problem with a business-as-usual budget is when business-as-usual isn’t working in education. The two most reliable international assessments South Africa takes part in either show a slow-down in progress (in Grade 9 mathematics between 2011-2015) or no improvement at all (in Grade 4 reading between 2011 and 2016) (see here). There are a number of reasons to speculate why results are stagnating. Due to a 13% surge in births in 2003-2005 (most probably due to ARVs) without a concomitant rise in education spending, we are seeing increases in the number of learners per class, rising from 40 to 45 learners per class in primary schools and 41-48 learners in no-fee schools (according to Pirls 2016). What we needed from this budget was a recognition that the long-term struggles of the country (unemployment, inequality, low growth) cannot be addressed when 78% of Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning in any language. And that while reforming basic education is a long-term solution, long-term solutions have to start somewhere.

I have a lot of sympathy for Treasury officials who work tirelessly to make sure that the country is economically on track and deftly navigate the trade-offs, prioritization and budget constraints that are the real politics of any democracy. There is no doubt that neutralizing the Eskom threat was the number one challenge we needed to overcome in this budget. Yet there will always be a new urgent challenge that grabs our attention and is considered political dynamite – #FeesMustFall in 2017/18 Eskom in 2019/2020 – surely there will be others. Hats off to Minister Mboweni and his Treasury officials for steering us through the current crisis. Let’s hope his successor can move from dealing with crisis  upon crisis and instead start laying the foundations for long term progress.

19 January 2019.

My background note for the meeting with the Minister of Finance Tito Mboweni at the Treasury Economic Colloquium (19 January 2019; South African Reserve Bank), PDF Note HERE.

Overview: 

The education problem as it stands in January 2019:

1. Learning outcomes: After initial improvements in learning outcomes – notably between 2003-2011 (TIMSS & PIRLS), now stalling progress in learning outcomes.
2. Expenditure: Because of above-inflation wage increases for teachers, combined with a 13% increase in births 2003-2005 there has been an 8% decline in real per-pupil education expenditure since 2010.
3. Politics: There is currently an unacceptably high level of undue political influence by the majority teacher union (SADTU) on the governance of basic education.
4. Teachers: The majority of teachers (80%) lack the content knowledge and pedagogical skill to teach the subjects they are currently teaching. For example 79% of Grade 6 mathematics teachers cannot get 60% on a Grade 6/7 level maths test.
5. Throughput: There is currently very low throughput rates to university: Of 100 learners that start school, approximately 50-60 will make it to matric, 40-50 will pass matric, and 14 will qualify to go to university. Only 6 will get an undergraduate degree within 6 years.
6. Reading: Nationally representative surveys (PIRLS 2016) show that 78% of Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning in any language (all 11 languages were assessed).
7. Mathematics: Nationally representative surveys (TIMSS-N 2015) show that 61% of Grade 5 learners could not add and subtract whole numbers, have no understanding of multiplication by one-digit numbers and cannot solve simple word problems, i.e. they cannot do basic mathematics.
8. Wastelands: Approximately half of South African primary schools (45%) could be described as “cognitive wastelands”, that is that not a single learner can read and make inferences. Similarly, in 47% of high-schools not a single child coule reach the intermediate international benchmark in mathematics. By contrast, the figure in Botswana is 2%.
9. Technology: Access to technology in South African classrooms is low by international standards. The solution is functional computer laboratories not one-device-per-child.

Education priorities for reform:

• Expenditure: Stop the decline in real per-learner education expenditure.

• Radical prioritization and focusing on the Foundation Phase (Grade R-3)

1. Fiscally prioritize Primary Schools.
2. National Primary School Assessment.

• A Ramaphosa Reading Plan

1. Provide graded reader anthologies to every child in Grades R-3
2. Recruit, train and employ a small army of Foundation Phase reading coaches.
3. Provide a minimum box of educational resources to all classrooms starting with Gr1-3.
4. Eliminate extreme class sizes.
5. Eliminate grossly inadequate physical infrastructure.
6. Technology in education

• Depoliticize the bureaucracy: Separate bureaucratic and teachers’ unions.

Introduction

South Africa today is the most unequal country in the world. The richest 10% of South Africans lay claim to 65% of national income and 90% of national wealth; the largest 90-10 gap in the world (Alvaredo et al, 2018, p. 150; Orthofer, 2016). Given the strong and deeply historical links between education and the labour market these inequities are mirrored in the education system. Two decades after apartheid it is still the case that the life chances of the average South African child are determined not by their ability or the result of hard-work and determination, but instead by the colour of their skin, the province of their birth, and the wealth of their parents. These realities are so deterministic that before a child’s seventh birthday one can predict with some precision whether they will inherit a life of chronic poverty and sustained unemployment or a dignified life and meaningful work. The sheer magnitude of these inequities is incredible. The top 200 high schools in the country have more students achieving distinctions in Mathematics or Physical Science (80%+) than the remaining 6,476 high schools combined [1]. Put differently, 3% of South African high schools create more Mathematics or Physical Science distinctions than the remaining 97% put together. Of those 200 schools, 185 are former White-only schools and all 185 charge significant fees. Although they are now deracialized, 57% of the matrics in these top 200 schools were White. This is less surprising when one considers that in 2014/15, White South Africans still make up two-thirds of the ‘elite’ in South Africa (the wealthiest 4% of society) (Schotte et al, 2018, p. 98).

In a few years’ time when we look back on three decades of democracy in South Africa, it is this conundrum – the stubbornness of inequality and its patterns of persistence – that will stand out amongst the rest as the most demanding of explanation, justification and analysis. This is because inequality needs to be justified; you need to tell a story about why this level of inequality is acceptable or unacceptable. As South Africans what is the story that we tell ourselves about inequality and how far we have come since 1994? Have we accepted our current trajectory as the only path out of stubbornly high and problematically patterned inequality? Are there different and preferential equilibria we have not yet thought of or explored, and if so what are they? In practical terms, how does one get onto a higher economic growth path that is both sustainable and inclusive? Does anyone really know how to ‘create’ jobs apart from higher growth and a more skilled workforce? The latter of which is not possible without improving the education system, so how does one get to a more equitable and improved distribution of teachers, resources or learning outcomes? And what are the political, social and financial price-tags attached to doing so? These are the questions that should stand front and centre in our national discourse and with which the next elected government must grapple. 

The education problem as it stands in January 2019

• (1) After initial improvements, now stalling progress in learning outcomes: There is now a growing body of reliable and consistent findings documenting gains in learning outcomes, particularly between 2002 and 2011 (see Van der Berg & Gustafsson, 2019 forthcoming for a full discussion). As more corroborating evidence emerges, the position that learning outcomes have not improved in South Africa – or that “education is worse than it was under apartheid” (Ramphele, 2016) – is increasingly becoming a fringe view that is not supported by the data or serious scholars. Because South Africa participates in a number of international assessments that are comparable over time and across countries we can compare our performance in maths, reading and science over time fairly accurately. Broadly speaking one can see three periods which could loosely be referred to as (1) a ‘stagnating’ phase (1995-2003) where learning outcomes did not improve at all (neither in maths between TIMSS 1995, 1999 and 2003, nor in reading between SACMEQ 2000 and 2007), (2) the ‘improving’ phase (2003-2011) where learning outcomes improved relatively quickly, supported by maths data from TIMSS 2003-2011, SACMEQ 2007-2013 and reading data from PIRLS 2006-2011, and (3) the ‘stalling’ phase (2011-2016) where gains have flattened out as evidenced by the lower gains in mathematics in TIMSS 2011-2015 and particularly the lack of any improvement in reading between PIRLS 2011-2016.

While the international assessments are the most reliable indicators of progress in education, there are also other pieces of supporting evidence, including the fourfold increase in black university graduates between 1994 (11,339 black graduates) and 2014 (48,686 black graduates) (Van Broekhuizen, 2016: p.12), and the large increase in the number of matriculants receiving mathematics marks which make them eligible for engineering at university, increasing from 18,601 to 25,054 between 2002 and 2016 (Van der Berg & Gustafsson, 2019).

• (2) An 8% decline in real per-pupil education expenditure since 2010: One of the underappreciated trends of the last seven years is the declining per-learner public expenditure on basic education in real terms. To be specific, between 2010 and 2017 there has been an 8% decline in per learner expenditure in purchasing power terms[2]. The reason this fact has gone largely unnoticed in South Africa is that they are hidden in aggregate figures and discounted using the wrong inflation rate. The total expenditure on basic education has increased by 7,1% per year between 2010 and 2017 to keep up with Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation over the period. But CPI is the wrong index to deflate education expenditures since more than 80% of expenditures are on teacher salaries rather than a typical basket of goods. The salient question when calculating real expenditures on education is thus, “What resources are required in 2017 to buy the same level of inputs used in 2010?” While inflation meant that the average basket of goods in 2017 was 38% more expensive than it was in 2010, teacher salaries over the same period increased by 57% due to above-average-inflation wage agreements in the Education Labour Relations Council (ELRC). The second, and more important factor, is that the total number of learners across which the budget must be spread has been increasing significantly. Between 2003 and 2005 there was a large increase in births[3] of around 13% which led to a 13% rise in Grade 1 enrolments from 2009 to 2015 which has been largely unnoticed by government officials (Gustafsson, 2018). Although births per year did come down somewhat in around 2008, the current levels are still higher than the pre-2003 levels. Seen together, these two factors explain why there has been an 8% decline in per learner expenditure on basic education between 2010 and 2017. The decline in state funding over the last seven years is already starting to show up in international assessments. According to PIRLS the average class size in Grade 4 was 40 in 2011 which has now increased to 45 learners per class in 2016 (Howie et al., 2017: 13, 127). Among the poorest 60% of learners, class sizes experienced by the average learner increased from 41 to 48 learners per class between 2011 and 2016 (own calculations). For the richest 10% of learners, class sizes increased from 33 to 35 learners per class over the same period. This decline in funding is one of the leading explanations for the ‘stalling’ of educational improvement since 2011 described above.

Figure 2: Current provincial per learner expenditure on basic education 2010 to 2019 (Own calculations using real cost drivers and expressed in 2017 Rands, 2017-2019 projections based on MTEF)

• (3) Undue political influence by the majority teacher union (SADTU): The most recent and authoritative account of the accountability problems faced in the sector comes in the form of a 2016 report by the Ministerial Task Team headed by Professor John Volmink formed to investigate fraud and corruption in the sector, and specifically the sale of teacher and principal posts for cash and livestock (Department of Education, 2016). They found that the dominant teacher union – the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) was in “de facto control” (p.119) of the education departments in six of the nine provinces in the country. The investigators report that “all the Deputy Directors-General in the Department of Basic Education are SADTU members and attend meetings of that Union” and conclude that, “it is not improbable to say that schooling throughout South Africa is run by SADTU” (Department of Education, 2016; p.93). The Minister of Basic Education Ms Angie Motshekga has largely ignored the recommendations of the Task Team and instead asked the provincial departments to report on what they are doing to address the issues contained in it. The lack of action on this is widely believed to be due to union opposition to the report.
• (4) A lack of teacher capacity: No education system can move beyond the quality of its teachers. There is now a large body of evidence in South Africa attesting to the fact that the majority of South African teachers do not have currently have the content knowledge or pedagogical skills necessary to impart the curriculum. In a nationally representative sample of primary schools, it was found that 79% of Grade 6 Mathematics teachers could not score 60% or higher on Grade 6 or 7 level questions (Venkat & Spaull, 2015).

Figure 3: Proportion of South African grade 6 mathematics teachers by content knowledge (CK) group – SACMEQ 2007 (with 95% confidence interval) (Venkat & Spaull, 2015: p.127).

• (5) Low throughput to university: Of 100 children that start school, approximately 60 will reach and write matric, 37 will pass and 12 will access university. Only 4 will complete an undergraduate degree within 6 years. Low through-put rates and weak performance in high school is rooted in weak foundations from primary school (Spaull & Kotze, 2015, Van der Berg et al., 2016).

Figure 4: The qualifications pyramid in South Africa (Van Broekhuizen et al., 2016)

• (6) 78% of primary school children do not learn to read in Grade 1-3: Learning to read for meaning is the most critical skill children learn in primary school. It is the skill upon which all other skills depend. The South African curriculum stipulates that children should “learn to read” in Grades 1-3 and then “read to learn” in Grade 4 onwards. Thus they should be able to read for meaning by the end of Grade 3 in their home-language and in English. The recent Progress in International Reading Literacy (PIRLS 2016) study showed that 78% of South African Grade 4 children could not read for meaning in any language, that is they could not “locate and retrieve an explicitly stated detail.” Comparable figures in other countries are 64% (Morocco), 35% (Iran), 13% (Chile), and 3% (United Kingdom) (Mullis et al., 2017a).
• (7) 61% of primary school children do not learn basic mathematics by Grade 5: Learning to use the four operations effectively and with confidence is one of the most essential mathematical skills children learn in primary school. According to the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS 2015), 61% of South African Grade 5 learners could not do basic mathematics, that is they could not add and subtract whole numbers, have no understanding of multiplication by one-digit numbers and cannot solve simple word problems (Mullis et al., 2017b).
• (8) Half of SA primary schools are “cognitive wastelands”: One method of determining the educational possibilities in a school is to look at the highest achieving learner in a class (the maxima distribution). This can be thought of as the ‘ceiling’ that is possible in that school. In 45% of South African Grade 4 classrooms there was not a single student that could read in their home language and make inferences (the PIRLS Intermediate International Benchmark). These schools likely require quite radical interventions to improve results. To quote Van der Berg & Gustafsson (2019, p:19 forthcoming) who apply the same method and look at TIMSS Grade 9:

“In 47% of [South African high] schools there was not a single learner who reached 475 points, the TIMSS Intermediate International Benchmark. In this respect South Africa did much worse than any other country… [The comparable figure in Botswana is just 2%]. The comparison with Botswana is particularly important, because Botswana is within the same region but also because both Botswana and South Africa tested Grade 9. In the context of South Africa’s skills shortfall and the need for more black professionals, it is particularly problematic that a large segment of the schooling system are in effect ‘academic wastelands’ which do not produce even a single learner performing at the intermediate international benchmark.

Figure 5 below illustrates this point by showing the “effective” grade that children are in at each stage of the schooling process. If we look at the no-fee schools (poorest 80% of schools), learners are approximately 2,5 years behind the curriculum in Grade 3. By Grade 9 they are 4-5 years behind the curriculum, showing the compounding effect of not getting primary school learning right.

Figure 5: South African mathematics learning trajectories by national socioeconomic quintiles using a variable standard deviation for a year of learning (0.28 in grade 3 to 0.2 in grade 8 with interpolated values for in-between grades (Based on NSES 2007/8/9 for grades 3/4/5, SACMEQ 2007 for grade 6 and TIMSS 2011 for grade 9, including 95% confidence interval (See Spaull & Kotze, 2015: p.21)

Education priorities for reform:

• (1) Stop the decline in real per-learner education expenditure: It is difficult to think of any scenario where the South African education system becomes significantly more equitable with fewer resources than it has now. If anything, a decline in public funding is likely to exacerbate inequalities since it would increase the resource gap between fee-charging and no-fee schools. Although initially caused by a spike in births and above-inflation teacher wage increases, this decline is likely to be sustained with increasing funding pressure from Free Higher Education commitments and low economic growth
  • Response: Appoint a Task Team & address in budget speech. The Minister of Finance should constitute a small task team to determine the causes, extent and consequences of the decline in per learner real expenditure and increase funding in the February Budget Speech. Any additional funds should be explicitly ring-fenced for evidence-based interventions like providing graded readers, reading coaches and lesson plans to all primary schools.

• (2) Radical prioritization and focusing on the Foundation Phase (Grade R-3): The first step towards fixing the education system is ruthless prioritization. South Africa does not have the financial resources, political capital or human expertise to solve many problems at the same time. Policy-makers and politicians need to accept that underperformance in matric and high drop-out rates are rooted in weak foundations in primary school and specifically in Grades R-3. If 78% of Grade 4’s cannot read for meaning in any language they are precluded from success at school. In mathematics, only a third of South African children are equipped to succeed which can reliably be traced back to primary school (Spaull & Kotze, 2015). We typically look at the approximately 360,000 matrics who pass (30%+) either Maths or Maths Literacy (2017) which is about 36% of the original cohort. Yet if we look at Grade 9 we see that only 34% of Grade 9’s could do basic maths (TIMSS 2015), and if we look even earlier at Grade 5 we see that only 39% of Grade 5’s acquired basic numeracy (TIMSS-N 2015). Clearly underperformance in high school and matric is driven by underperformance in primary school.
  • Response: Fiscally prioritize Primary Schools. Institute an expenditure and hiring freeze on all additional programs and posts that are not targeted at numeracy and literacy in primary schools. At the most basic level the Post-Provisioning-Norms (PPN) should be adjusted to ensure fewer teachers for high-schools and more teachers for the Foundation Phase (Grades R-3). Both the Western Cape and the Eastern Cape have taken this approach and shown considerable success in doing so.
  • Response: National Primary School Assessment. Implement a universal national assessment at Grade 3, 6 and 9 testing reading and mathematics. South Africa is the only country in the region without a nation-wide primary school exam. Without information on achievement one cannot target support or monitor progress.

• (3) A Ramaphosa Reading Plan: From the evidence presented above it is clear that the majority of South African learners are not receiving a quality education, or one that could be considered adequate. They leave primary school unable to read for meaning (basic literacy) or calculate with confidence (basic numeracy). The root of this can be found in the fact that 78% of learners do not learn to read for meaning in any language in the Foundation Phase. This is the source of the biggest problem and therefore must be the site of the biggest intervention.
  • Response: (1) Provide graded reader anthologies to every child in Grades R-3. One of the most effective methods of teaching children to read is using what are called ‘graded-readers.’ These are available in all ex-Model C schools and are ubiquitous in OECD countries. They are a set of numbered stories that start with one word-texts (Story 1) and get incrementally more difficult until they are fully fledged texts (Story 66). These can be distributed together with the DBE Rainbow Workbooks simply by extending existing logistics and procurement contracts that are known to work (99% of DBE Workbooks reach their intended school). When using openly licensed graded readers (Vula Bula series) and printed in an anthology format (20 stories per book) the cost is drastically reduced. The ECDOE has proven the viability of this model in 2018 for use in 2019 when it distributed isiXhosa graded readers to every Foundation Phase child in the province. In September 2018, it printed 824,345 isiXhosa anthologies at a cost of R8 per color book (Personal Communication with DDG Penny Vinjevold) which were distributed in November 2018 to all primary schools in the province for use in 2019. To implement this in all Foundation Phase classes (Grade R-3) in the country would cost an estimated R24-million per annum. The print-ready files of these anthologies are already available in all official SA languages and have been evaluated and approved by literacy experts. They were used in Gauteng Primary Literacy and Mathematics Strategy (GPLMS), the Early Grade Reading Study (EGRS) and by the National Education Collaboration Trust (NECT). Given the low cost and potential high-impact of this intervention it is, as they say, a no-brainer.
  • Response: (2) Recruit, train and employ a small army of Foundation Phase reading coaches. There is now strong evidence that the best way of improving learning outcomes throughout the system is by focusing on basic literacy and numeracy in the first three years of school. In South Africa, there have been a number of studies evaluating different methods of teacher training (centralized training, on-site coaching, cluster workshops etc.). The DBE’s Early Grade Reading Study (EGRS) Randomized Control Trials in the North West and Mpumalanga (200+ schools) have shown that the only method that improves reading outcomes significantly is a package of resources that includes (1) an expert reading coach that visits teachers in their classrooms, (2) lesson plans that guide teachers on how to use the resources, and (3) graded readers, Big Books and posters. In schools that received this intervention there was a 40% improvement in reading outcomes within two years as compared to control schools (Taylor et al., 2017). With a small army of reading coaches, resources, and lesson plans you could reach half of all primary schools within 8 years and it would cost approximately R1,3billion per year (Personal Communication, Stephen Taylor, DBE).
  • Response: (3) Provide a minimum box of educational resources to all classrooms starting with Grade 1-3. The provision of the DBE Rainbow Workbooks to all primary schools in the country was arguably the largest single improvement to basic education since the advent of democracy. Although they are A4 and in full-colour, each book costs only R4 to print since they have no copyright and are printed in large volumes (Personal Communication Veronica McKay, 11 Jan 2019). This model of printing license-free (Creative Commons) materials in large volumes using a central government printer significantly lowers the cost of providing learning and teaching support materials. Rather than assuming teachers and schools have the time, knowledge and administrative capacity to select each textbook, workbook, poster etc and order these through cumbersome procurement processes (and therefore it doesn’t happen), the Department should centrally determine a “minimum box of resources” per grade that every teacher teaching that grade receives. For example, providing every Foundation Phase teacher with 40 Big Book Stories (one per week), 40 posters, Lesson Plans, Phonics Frieze, Alphabet Frieze, Phonics Cards, Alphabet Cards, and a basic set of stationery costs R2,770 per teacher (this is the LTSM cost per teacher per year of the Funda Wande Literacy Intervention in the Eastern Cape, i.e. using only Creative Commons licensed Vula Bula materials.) To provide this minimum box of LTSM for all primary school classrooms in the country would cost approximately R731million per year (There are approximately 33,000 teachers per grade in SA).
  • Response: (4) Eliminate extreme class sizes. It is estimated that at least 10% of Foundation Phase learners in the Eastern Cape and Limpopo are in classes where the class size is 60 learners per class or higher (Spaull, 2016). Eliminating extreme classes of 50 or more learners per class, particularly in the Foundation Phase (Grade R-3), should be prioritized.
  • Response: (5) Eliminate grossly inadequate physical infrastructure. The fact that SA is a middle-income country yet still has children that drown in pit latrines, and that hundreds of thousands of learners and teachers are forced to attend schools that do not have water, electricity or dignified sanitation should be a source of national shame. The President should appoint a task team (equipped with high-level politicians, civil engineering executives, union representatives etc.) to come up with a plan to eliminate all major infrastructure backlogs (water, electricity, sanitation) within the President’s first term. Note every South African president since the transition has promised to eliminate these unsafe schools yet here we are in 2019 and there are still thousands of them.
  • Response: (6) Technology in education. There is currently a surge of interest in technology in education and specifically a new proposal to provide one-device-per-child. This is one area that has been studied quite extensively in various developing countries and the evidence consistently shows that providing technology to individual learners is not the most cost-effective method of improving learning outcomes and in every country where it has been implemented it was deemed a failure. (See Michael Trucano’s 2014 “Questions to ask (and not to ask) when your president tells you to buy 100k (or a million) tablets for students”). A sensible approach to increasing South African schools’ ICT readiness would involve (1) Prioritizing functional computer laboratories for high-schools (not primary schools), (2) providing all teachers with laptops, as well as (3) Ensuring more high-school learners take Computer Applications Technology (CAT) as a subject and increasing the number and quality of teachers who can teach this subject. For example, the number of Grade 12 learners passing Computer Applications Technology (CAT) is quite low at about 35,000 (7% of all candidates) and is actually declining (2018 NSC Report, p. 57). The ‘Action Plan 2019’ makes explicit mention of the severe inequalities that prevail with respect to access to more technical subjects (p. 31). For example, half of white males take technical subjects, against 5% for black African males. Only a quarter of schools writing the NSC offer CAT, and these are concentrated in quintiles 4 and 5: 67% of quintile 5 schools and 46% of quintile 4 schools offer CAT, against just 14% in quintiles 1 to 3 (in quintile 1 it is a mere 6%). Breaking the patterns of white and middle-class advantage by giving access to technical subjects is an important step towards a more equitable education system. This could be achieved by a goal to “Ensure that by 2024 half of quintiles 1 to 3 schools will begin offering Computer Applications Technology facilitating employment in the 21^st Century workplace”.
• South Africa: There have been a number of initiatives in South Africa to implement various ICT-related programs and roll-outs, particularly in Gauteng and the Western Cape. A recent overview by Ostrowick (2016) summarizes the evidence (see Appendix B; see also Meyer & Gent, 2016). An evaluation of the Khanya Computer Labs project in the Western Cape (Louw et al, 2008) found “substantial variability in implementation” but did find a positive impact for those that used it. The Western Cape’s ‘e-Education Game Changer’ and Gauteng’s experimentation with SmartBoards and laptops for children are both instructive about the logistical complexities with using technology in education. There is also a recent MSDF-funded report conducted by AC Kearney (Draft copy 15 Jan 2019) on “Education Data and Tool Landscape Diagnostic review e-education in South Africa” that will be published at the end of January 2019.

Figure 6 below indicates that South African high-schools lag behind other developing countries when it comes to access to computers. However the evidence-based approach to remedy this is (1) focus on ensuring all high-school have functional computer laboratories (rather than one device per child, (2) piloting and evaluating teacher development programs on the use of ICT-in-teaching, (3) piloting and evaluating different software and apps to see which of these are most likely to be beneficial to learners and teachers.

Figure 6: Comparison of access to computers in high schools using TIMSS Gr8 2003-2015 (Source: Martin Gustafsson, 2019).

Summary of the evidence from comparison countries:

• Global review (Colombia, Peru, China, Netherlands, US, India, Israel, Romania, England, Netherlands, Ecuador): In a recent rigorous review of 26 studies on the use of hardware in teaching published in the American Economic Review, Muralidharan et al., (2018) find that the bulk of studies (67%) in 11 countries find no result at all (40%) or an ambiguous result with some positive and some negative results (27%). Only 27% of the studies found positive results and a minority found negative results (6%). Sample sizes for studies with “no impact” were often large and program intensity was substantial (Muralidharan, Singh & Ganimian, 2018: Appendix C). These studies are summarized in Appendix A below.

• Peru: Large-scale randomized control trial in 319 primary schools of the roll-out of One-Laptop-Per-Child in rural Peru: “No evidence is found of effects on enrollment and test scores in Math and Language…the time allocated to activities directly related to school does not seem to have changed. The program did not affect attendance or time allocated to doing homework. Second, it has been suggested that the introduction of computers increases motivation, but our results suggest otherwise. Third, there is no evidence the program influenced reading habits…Finally, the program did not seem to have affected the quality of instruction in class” (Inter-American Development Bank, 2012: p3).

• Colombia: Randomised Control Trial evaluation of “Computers for Education” in 97 schools in Colombia. The findings showed no improvement in learning outcomes: “Overall, the program seems to have had little effect on students’ test scores and other outcomes. These results are consistent across grade levels, subjects, and gender. The main reason for these results seems to be the failure to incorporate the computers into the educational process. Although the program increased the number of computers in the treatment schools and provided training to the teachers on how to use the computers in their classrooms, surveys of both teachers and students suggest that teachers did not incorporate the computers into their curriculum” (World Bank, 2009: p2).
• Kenya: USAID conducted a large-scale Randomized Control Trial comparing three interventions aimed at improving early literacy using technology: (1) student e-readers, (2) teacher tablets, and (3) tablets for Instructional Supervisors. “The Kisumu ICT study allowed for a comparative analysis of the impact of ICT on learning outcomes in Kenya when interventions took place at three different levels in the education system: student, teacher, and instructional coach. The results of all three of the Kisumu County interventions showed that literacy outcomes can be improved. Despite great excitement over ICT interventions to support literacy, however, technology is not a cure-all for the poor literacy outcomes in Kenya and other countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In this case, whereas technology may have helped TAC tutors to better provide instructional support, we found no evidence that providing tablets to teachers or e-readers to students was more effective than the base PRIMR literacy program that was implemented without expensive ICT. When costs are considered, there are non-ICT interventions that could have larger impacts on learning outcomes with lower costs.” (Piper et al., 2016: p213).
• Los Angeles: In March 2013 the largest school district in the United States (Los Angeles Unified School District, LAUSD) entered into a $1,3-billion contract with Apple and Pearson to provide 650,000 iPads and a Pearson-developed digital curriculum. Despite a functional and somewhat sophisticated education bureaucracy the project was deemed an outright failure: “In March 2014 [1 year after implementation] nearly all schools had stopped the usage of the Pearson curriculum due to crippling technical problems and incompleteness… Due to immense pressure and criticism, Deasy [The Superintendent General] resigned from the school district in October 2014. In December 2014 LAUSD officially terminated the contract with Apple as a result of frequent problems on the daily use of the curriculum, which frequently interrupted normal learning in schools. Based on these problems and following the termination of the contract, LAUSD sought a refund from Apple” (Alami, 2016: p65).

• Depoliticize the bureaucracy: Teacher unions play an important role in South Africa advocating for the interests of teachers. There is no reason why members of the national and provincial education bureaucracies should be allowed to be members of a teacher union if they are not teachers and do not work in a school. The interests of teachers and those of the government are often contradictory (for example managing a bloated budget on the one hand and wanting to increase teacher salaries on the other). If high-level officials in the DBE are paid-up teacher union members (as all the DDGs in the DBE are) the union technically sits on both sides of the bargaining table. The widespread perception that promotion in the provincial and national bureaucracies is only possible with SADTU is problematic for accountability and creates a conflict of interest.
  • Response: Separate bureaucratic and teachers’ unions. While obviously members of the provincial and national Departments of Basic Education should be allowed to unionize, they should not be allowed to join a teacher’s union, given that they are not teachers. There is no reason why Departmental officials and in-school teachers need to e part of the same union. This would require passing legislation requiring that for someone to be a member of a teacher union they cannot work for the national or provincial Department of Basic Education.

References:

2018. Kerney. 2018. Education Data and Tool Landscape Diagnostic in South Africa. December 2018 Draft (162 pages)

Alami, A. (2016) Why do Technology Projects Fail? Procedia Computer Science 100 (2016) 62 – 71

Alvaredo, F., Chancel, L., Piketty, T., Saez, E., & Zucman, G. 2018. World Inequality Report 2018. Online. Available: http://wir2018.wid.world/ [Accessed: 26 June 2018]

Department of Basic Education. 2016. Report of the Ministerial Task Team Appointed by Minister Angie Motshekga to Investigate Allegations into the Selling of Posts of Educators By Members of Teachers Unions and Departmental Officials in Provincial Education Departments. Department of Basic Education. Pretoria

Inter-American Development Bank. (2012). Technology and Child Development: Evidence from the One Laptop per Child Program. IDB Working Paper Series No. IDB-WP 304.

Martin Gustafsson, 2018. “Understanding the sharp primary level enrolment increases beginning in 2011,”Working Papers 08/2018, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.

Mullis IVS, Martin MO, Foy P, Hooper M (2017) Pirls 2016: International Results in Reading. International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement

Muralidharan, K., Singh, A., & Ganimian, A. J. (2018). Disrupting education? Experimental evidence on technology-aided instruction in India. American Economic Review, Working Paper.

Orthofer, A. Welath inequality in South Africa: Evidence from survey and tax data. REDI3x3 Working paper 15. June 2016.

Piper, B., Zuilkowski, S., Kwayumba, D., & Strigel, C. (2016). Does technology improve reading outcomes? Comparing the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of ICT interventions for early grade reading in Kenya. International Journal of Educational Development 49 (2016) 2014-214

Ramphele, M. 2012. Education system worse than under apartheid: Ramphele. Mail & Guardian 23 March 2012. (Online). Available: https://mg.co.za/article/2012-03-23-education-system-worse-than-under-apartheid-ramphele [Accessed: 26 June 2018]

Schotte, S., Zizzamia, R., & Leibbrandt, M. (2018). A poverty dynamics approach to social stratification: The South African case. World Development 110 (2018) 88-103.

Spaull, N. and Kotze, J. (2015). Starting behind and staying behind in South Africa: The case of insurmountable learning deficits in mathematics. International Journal of Educational Development. Vol 41 (March) pp12-24

Spaull, N. (2016). Excessive class sizes in the Foundation Phase. Research on Socioeconomic Policy (RESEP). Policy Brief. Apr/2016.

Trucano. M (2016). Questions to ask (and not to ask) when your president tells you to buy 100k (or a million) tablets for students. World Bank. EduTech. (Online). Available: https://blogs.worldbank.org/edutech/educational-tablets-questions-to-ask

Van Broekhuizen, H. 2016. Graduate unemployment and Higher Education Institutions in South Africa. Stellenbosch Economic Working Paper Series WP08/2016. Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Van Broekhuizen, H., Van der Berg, S., & Hofmeyr, H. (2016) Higher Education Access and Outcomes for the 2008 National Matric Cohort. Stellenbosch Economic Working Paper 16/16 (Online). Available: http://resep.sun.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/wp-16-2016_1.pdf

Van der Berg, S. & Gustafsson, M. (2019). Educational Outcomes in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Signs of Progress Despite Great Inequality. In “South African Schooling: The Enigma of inequality (Eds: Spaull, N & Jansen, J). Springer.

Van der Berg, S., Spaull, N., Wills, G., Gustafsson, M., & Kotzé, J. (2016) Identifying the Binding Constraints in Education. Report commissioned by the South African Presidency and funded by the European Union’s Programme to Support Pro-Poor Policy Development (PSPPD) initative.

Venkat, H. and Spaull, N. 2015. What do we know about primary teachers’ mathematical content knowledge in South Africa? An analysis of SACMEQ 2007. International Journal of Educational Development. Vol. 41 Mar. p.121-130.

World Bank. (2009). The Use and Misuse of Computers in Education: Evidence from a Randomizes Experiment in Colombia. Policy Research Working Paper 4836.

Appendix A: Summary table of Muralidharan et al.’s, (2018) overview of technology in education interventions

Appendix B: Status of Technology in SA Schools (Source: Ostrowick, 2016)

Appendix C: Over-arching findings of MSDF-funded AC Kearney report “Education Data and Tool Landscape Diagnostic in South Africa” (2019)

[1] This is based on my own calculations on the Matric 2014 National Senior Certificate data (i.e. it does not include IEB candidates, but does include independent schools that write the NSC. ‘Top’ here is defined as the largest number of mathematics distinctions (80%+). In almost all of these schools there are at least 9 mathematics distinctions per school. Note also that 23 of the 200 schools are independent schools writing the NSC exam.

[2] This is based on my own calculations using Treasury’s Estimates of Public Revenue and Expenditure (EPRE) data which is available on their website.

[3] This demographic phenomenon has been confirmed by Home Affairs birth registration data as well as age-specific data in the Department of Basic Education’s Annual Survey of Schools (ASS) and the Learner Unit Record Information Tracking System (LURITS). The leading explanation is that the rise in births coincides with the roll out of Anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment. Thus larger cohorts of children have been moving through the schooling system, with the ‘surge’ reaching Grade 8 in 2018

Last week the Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, announced the matric pass rate of 78% to the usual fanfare and political theatre to which we have all grown accustom. To her credit she emphasized the importance of early learning and ensuring that all children learn to read for meaning by the age of 10 and the need for improving Early Childhood Development. Since the release most commentators have chosen to focus on (1) inter-provincial results (Gauteng came out on top), (2) questions about the “true” matric pass-rate (of 100 children that started Grade 1 in 2007, only 51 made it to matric, 40 passed and 17 got bachelor’s passes. So, the pass mark of 78% is probably more like 40% if you take into account the 400,000 kids that drop out the system before matric). And a few people focused on (3) gender; for every 100 girls in matric there are only 82 boys, mainly because boys do worse than girls at school and dropout in higher numbers.

But not many people have focused on the surge in bachelor passes compared to last year. In 2017 there were 153,610 bachelor passes which increased to 172,043 in 2018, a massive 12% increase year on year. And this wasn’t because 2018 happened to be a bigger cohort than 2017, in fact it was slightly smaller than last year with 4,422 fewer matrics. So why was there such a big increase? I think the leading explanation is a change in policy in March last year (Government Gazette 41473-No.165:213) which changed the criteria for getting a bachelor’s pass by abolishing the “designated list” of subjects.  This went largely under the radar at the time. To get a bachelor pass before the change in policy you needed to get (1) 40% in your home-language, (2) at least 50% in four other subjects from the “designated list”, and 30% for one other subject. The “designated list” was a list of 18 subjects and includes the usual suspects like Accounting, Business Studies, Economics, Geography, Mathematics, Mathematics Literacy, History, Consumer Studies etc. Now that the list has been abolished, you can get 50% in any subject offered in matric. For example, now you can get 50% in Tourism, Computer Applications Technology, Dance and Hospitality (among others) and still qualify. Some of these subjects have very high enrolment. A total of 130,000 odd learners took Tourism in 2018 and 98% of them passed. About 32,000 learners took Computer Applications Technology and 92% passed. (The pass rates in Dance and Hospitality are 100% and 99% respectively).  So, if you got 40% for your home-language (which almost everyone does), 50% in Dance, Tourism, Hospitality and Consumer Studies, and 30% in Mathematics Literacy you get a bachelor’s pass and qualify to go to university. This is the first year that this has been the case.

In my view, this is quite clearly the leading explanation for the increase in bachelor passes in 2018. If you look at the largest nine ‘traditional’ subjects (Mathematics, Mathematics Literacy, Physical Science, Accounting, Business Studies, Economics, Geography, History, Life Science) there was actually a decrease of 2% in the total number of students getting 40%+ in these subjects (the Department doesn’t report 50%+ but we can assume similar trends). So, it’s clearly not because there were more students doing better in ‘traditional’ subjects.

As an aside, in 2014 Higher Education South Africa (HESA) commissioned a study titled “The Value of Designated Subjects in Terms of the Likely Student Success in Higher Education” and concluded that “Adding additional subjects to this [designated] list may flood an already over-subscribed public higher education system with more under-prepared students.” (HESA, 2014: p10). Go figure.

So why a perfect storm? Well there are basically three reasons: (1) We now have “free” higher education, which the overwhelming majority of students qualify for. This is one reason to think that enrolments would have increased this year anyway, (2) It’s an election year which means that any student-pressure in February will be politically difficult to ignore, and (3) there is now a large wave of additional students (18,433 more than last year) that qualify for university entrance and many of whom won’t be able to be accommodated. We know these are weaker students on average and therefore not as academically equipped to succeed at university in the coming years. Enrolment increases of weaker students coupled with funding pressure and an election means higher education is probably headed for a rough few years ahead.