Lessons learnt from SACMEQII: South African student performance in regional context

Servaas van der Berg () and Megan Louw ()

No 16/2007, Working Papers from Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics

Abstract: In regional context, South African students benefit from above average levels of public and private education resources. However, their performance on international tests – including SACMEQII (Southern African Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality, 2000) – is extremely weak. The first part of the paper positions South Africa within southern and eastern Africa on the basis of SACMEQII Grade 6 mathematics test scores. Hierarchical linear modelling techniques are then employed to model the relationship between socio-economic status (SES) and schooling in this highly unequal country. Three important drivers of inequity in test scores emerge: principal concern with monitoring student progress, teacher absenteeism and teacher quality. These interact with SES to give richer students a strong advantage.

Keywords: education quality; inequality; South Africa; Southern Africa; Hierarchical Linear Modelling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev, nep-edu, nep-hrm and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ekon.sun.ac.za/wpapers/2007/wp162007/wp-16-2007.pdf First version, 2007 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sza:wpaper:wpapers47

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Melt van Schoor ().