Department of Economics

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Browsing Department of Economics by Subject "Academic achievement -- South Africa"

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    Continuous assessment and matriculation examination marks – an empirical examination
    (AOSIS Publishing, 2016) Van der Berg, Servaas; Shepherd, Debra
    This study analyses information and feedback from matriculation level continuous assessment in the South African education system. Continuous assessment (CASS) at the time carried a 25% weight in the final matriculation (Grade 12) mark, and it provides feedback that affects examination preparation and effort. Weak assessment in schools sends wrong signals to students that may have important consequences for the way they approach the final examination. Moreover, similarly wrong signals earlier in their school careers may also have affected their subject choice and career planning. This study compares CASS data to the externally assessed matric exam marks for a number of subjects. There are two signalling dimensions to inaccurate assessments: (i) Inflated CASS marks can give students a false sense of security and lead to diminished exam effort. (ii) A weak correlation between CASS and the exam marks could mean poor signalling in another dimension: Relatively good students may get relatively low CASS marks. Such low correlations indicate poor assessment reliability, as the examination and continuous assessment should both be testing mastery of the same national curriculum. The paper analyses the extent of each of these dimensions of weak signalling in South African schools and draws disturbing conclusions for a large part of the school system.
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    An economic perspective on school leadership and teachers' unions in South Africa
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2016-03) Wills, Gabrielle; Van der Berg, Servaas; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Dept. of Economics.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This dissertation considers two factors that are considered critical to disrupting an existing culture of inefficiency in the production of learning in South Africa, namely school leadership and teachers’ unions. This first part of the dissertation positions itself within a growing discourse in the economics literature, and in local policy circles, on the importance of harnessing the role of school principals as a route to educational progress. Using a unique dataset constructed by matching administrative datasets in education, the study aims to provide greater specificity to our understanding of the labour market for school principals in South Africa. Chapter two constructs a quantitative profile of this market with implications for policy reforms in raising the calibre of school leadership. It identifies existing inequalities in the distribution of qualified and experienced principals across poorer and wealthier schools, gender disparities in principal positions, low levels of principal mobility across the public education system and high tenure. Together, the evidence points to the need for policies aimed at improving the initial match of principals to schools while developing incumbent principals over their length of tenure. The findings highlight that improving the design and implementation of policies guiding the appointment process for principals is a matter of urgency. A substantial and increasing number of principal retirements are taking place across South African schools given a rising age profile of school principals. Selection criteria need to be amended to identify relevant expertise and skills, rather than relying on principal credentials as captured in payroll data which are shown to be poor signals of principal quality. While the rising number of principal retirements presents an opportunity to replace weaker principals with better performing ones, this will be accompanied by various challenges including recruiting, selecting and hiring suitable candidates. Moreover, it takes time for school principals to have their full effect on school environments and initially, school performance may decline in response to a leadership succession. Using a fixed effects estimation approach, chapter three suggests that principal changes are indeed initially detrimental to school performance, especially in poorer schools. These results are robust to using an alternative estimation strategy following the work of Heckman, Ichimura and Todd (1997) to control for additional sources of estimation bias. The chapter also considers two mechanisms through which school leadership changes may impact on school performance, namely through rising promotion rates and teacher turnover. After the discussion on school leadership, chapter four shifts its focus to measure teacher union impacts on educational outcomes by investigating a disruption hypothesis that student learning is lost as a direct consequence of teacher participation in strike action, particularly the intensive public sector strike of 2007. The study exploits heterogeneity that exists within schools in the level of teacher union militancy to control for confounding factors that may bias estimates of strike effects. An across-subject within-student analysis, following an approach by Kingdon and Teal (2010), suggests that teacher strike participation negatively affects learning for students in the poorest three quarters of schools in South Africa. However, the discussion reveals difficulties in isolating out, specifically, unobserved teacher characteristics that may bias the observed strike effect. There is suggestive evidence that the most marginalised students in rural areas, and those that are weaker academically, are most at risk of learning losses as a result of teacher strikes. In this respect, industrial action has implications for widening existing inequalities in student achievement across the South African education system.
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    Graduate unemployment, higher education access and success, and teacher production in South Africa
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2016-03) Van Broekhuizen, Hendrik; Van der Berg, Servaas; Burger, Rulof; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Dept. of Economics.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In the context of South Africa’s socio-economic challenges, Higher Education (HE) has a key role to play, not just in terms of producing su cient numbers of graduates and the scarce skills that are required for economic development and growth, but also in terms of providing opportunities for social mobility and restitution. This dissertation examines the extent to which the public HE system ful ls these roles by investigating three topics within the nexus between the secondary schooling system, HE, and the labour market in South Africa. Chapter 2 of the dissertation investigates graduate unemployment by focussing on the associations between HE institutions and the expected employment and unemployment outcomes for graduates from di erent race groups. Using a probabilistic approach to link labour force and HE data, the chapter estimates the associations between the probability of having graduated from a particular type of HE institution and the likelihood of being unemployed or employed. The results indicate that graduate unemployment in South Africa is neither high, nor rising rapidly over time and that much of the observed inter-racial variation in graduate unemployment rates may be explained by di erences in the types of HE institutions that di erent race groups have historically been likely to attend. Chapter 3 investigates HE access and success in the Western Cape, with speci c emphasis on the roles that demographics, academic performance, and school-level factors play in explaining the extent of, and the differentials in, HE participation and throughput among matric learners in the province. By explicitly linking learner records from matric examination data with student records from HE data, the chapter estimates the marginal contributions and relative importance of various pre-entry correlates and HE-level factors for observed HE outcomes among learners in the Western Cape and illustrates the respective roles that HE access rate and HE throughput rate di erentials play in explaining observed racial di erentials in HE graduations. The ndings reveal that HE access, throughput, and dropout rates are strongly correlated with matric performance and that much of the observed racial di erentials in HE access and dropout in theWestern Cape can be explained by di erences in matric performance levels between race groups. It is argued that the persistent HE completion rate premiums for White students may partly be driven by di erential conditional selection into HE. Lastly, Chapter 4 focusses on the production of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) graduates by the public HE system between 2004 and 2013 and its implications for teacher supply in South Africa. Using aggregate Higher Education Management Information System (HEMIS) data, the chapter provides a comprehensive descriptive analysis of the trends and underlying correlates of rst-time enrolments and graduations in ITE programmes. Despite the fact that enrolments and graduations in ITE programmes have risen signi cantly since 2004, the ndings suggest that South Africa is currently not producing su cient numbers of teacher graduates. Projections indicate that the system could begin to produce su cient numbers of graduates to satisfy projected teacher demand within the next decade, conditional on current enrolment growth and programme throughput rates. The chapter concludes that, in order to address South Africa’s teacher supply shortfall, greater emphasis is needed on ensuring that ITE students complete their programmes, specialise in high-demand subject areas and phases, and transition into the teaching profession with minimal delay.