Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences

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Browsing Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences by Subject "Academic achievement -- Economic aspects -- Developing countries"

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    The role of non-cognitive skills in educational production in South Africa
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2021-03) Hofmeyr, Heleen; Wills, Gabrielle; Van der Berg, Servaas; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Dept. of Economics.
    ENGLISH SUMMARY : The role of non-cognitive skills in educational production in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) has largely been overlooked in the international economics of education literature. This constitutes a noteworthy gap in our knowledge of how learning outcomes are produced in LMIC contexts, given the centrality of non-cognitive skills to current education research and policy debates in high-income countries (HICs). This thesis aims to address this gap by investigating the association between noncognitive skills and learning outcomes in South Africa. The thesis begins by contextualising the study of non-cognitive skills in the economics of education as a discipline. A case is made for studying the association between non-cognitive skills and learning outcomes in South Africa. In Chapter 2, South African data from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) were analysed through the lens of “academic resilience” to explore why some students perform above expectations. In accordance with findings from the international literature, a strong association is found between noncognitive skills and the probability of exceptional performance. Chapter 3 makes use of reading achievement data from a local study titled Leadership for Literacy to explore potential interaction effects between school functionality and the non-cognitive skill of “grit”. The econometric analysis points to evidence of variation in the association between grit and reading achievement by school functionality, with a stronger association estimated for learners in more functional schools. These results provide empirical evidence in support of the hypothesis that school characteristics interact with non-cognitive skills to produce learning outcomes, a relationship that has received scant attention in the international literature on non-cognitive skills in educational production to date. A natural extension of the results from Chapters 2 and 3 is to explore whether South Africa’s gendered educational outcomes can be linked to gender differences in non-cognitive skills. This analysis is undertaken in Chapter 4. Again, the PIRLS and TIMSS data is utilised to model student achievement. Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition analysis is used to investigate how much of South Africa’s pro-girl achievement gap in these datasets can be explained by gender differences in observable characteristics, with a particular focus on the contribution of gender differences in non-cognitive skills. Overall, the analysis in this chapter illustrates clearly how focusing on non-cognitive skills as predictors of learning outcomes can enhance our understanding of hitherto unexplained features of South Africa’s educational performance, such as the country’s large and persistent pro-girl achievement gap. Together, these results suggest non-cognitive skills are an important input in the educational production process, even in contexts of severe resource deprivation which characterise a large part of the South African education system. This evidence makes an important contribution to local education policy and practice, as it suggests that targeting non-cognitive skills may be a powerful but hitherto unexplored policy lever for raising learning outcomes in the country.