Nicholas Spaull
Poverty &amp; privilege: Primary school inequality in South Africa
Stellenbosch University
strong legacy apartheid consequent correlation education wealth meant generally speaking poorer south african students perform worse academically although racial segregation abolished 18 years schools served predominantly white students apartheid remain functional served black students remain dysfunctional unable impart necessary numeracy literacy skills students acquiring level present study provides overview dualistic nature primary education system south africa special attention paid bimodality student performance argues fact two different education systems south africa thus two different datagenerating processes two subsystems seen splitting student performance formerdepartment language socioeconomic status implications dualistic schooling system also elucidated special emphasis government reporting econometric modeling recently released sacmeq iii dataset used econometric modeling study finds modeling student performance separately wealthiest 25 schools one hand poorest 75 schools stark differences factors influencing student performance five 27 factors shared two models mathematics 11 30 factors reading suggests bifurcated system process converts inputs outputs fundamentally different subsystem ultimately paper two logical conclusions 1 observing averages south african education uniquely misleading overestimates educational achievement majority students 2 modeling single schooling system fact two school systems lead spurious results misleading policy conclusions