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This paper reports on the South African findings from an international mixed methods study between the LEGO Foundation, Dubit and the Universities of Sheffield (England) and Cape Town (South Africa) on young children's learning with digital technology. The findings of the study, the first of its kind in South Africa, show the consistency of qualities and experience of play, but also reveal socio-economic, linguistic, ethnic, gender and racial inequalities in the play environments of both groups of 3–11-year-olds. Yet, despite these structural inequalities, the play ecologies of children in resource-constrained environments show their creativity within the digital/non-digital environment. The paper discusses some of the analytical tools used and the geo-political issues raised, and considers these in conjunction with selected data. We conclude that the different socio-cultural conditions and geo-political realities offer new insights about the role global education research can play in helping combat structural inequalities in resource-constrained environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple deprivation affects a large proportion of schools in South Africa. The past 20 years of democracy have tended to focus on reforming education through curricula revision and a raft of redress-directed interventions, through the application of what we call a broad-brush policy approach. The paper argues that a broad-brush policy application fails to recognise the contextualised challenges faced in specific schools. The central purpose of the research was to discover the specific challenges and leadership issues that schools in multiple deprived communities face, and to identify ways in which such schools dealt with these challenges. The research was conducted through a case study approach of three schools in one of the most impoverished provinces of the country. In total 3 principals, 3 parents and 26 teachers were interviewed. The study found that while the three schools shared many similar conditions of poverty that drove the poor to marginal performance, stories of success tended to be strongly related to four key factors: (1) leadership that went beyond an ordinary focus on instruction; (2) staff stability; (3) flexible scheduling that allowed parental involvement; and (4) a focus on a school-wide project that acted as a rallying point and a source of pride for the entire school. The paper identifies asset-based leadership and servant leadership approaches as generative in schools facing multiple deprivation. The paper concludes with a call for more school-based improvement initiatives that seek to interrogate the impact of factors of multiple deprivation, and a broad policy redirection towards school improvement rather than educational reform, which has been the focus in the past 20 years. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Between 2011 and 2012, 40.1% of all sexual offences in South Africa involved children under 18. Important scholarship has demonstrated how large-scale social and economic inequalities structure African girls’ risk to and experience of sexual violence leading to a condemnation of violent masculinities and the social processes that produce it. Under conditions of chronic poverty and unstable living conditions, girls’ vulnerability to sexual violence is increased. Schools located in extreme settings, without adequate material and social resources are often in the frontline in dealing with sexual violence. This paper examines how a selected group of teachers located in a township primary school understand their role in the social protection of young girls in the context of sexual violence. An ethic of care dominated teachers’ responses to girls’ rendered vulnerable to sexual violence, but as this paper argues, caring is both vital and inadequate. This point becomes particularly clear as turbulent social conditions and material struggles beyond the school limit teachers’ potential to safeguard the needs of girls, resulting in their silence and fear contracted by their difficulty to work with parents. These social processes underscore the need to attend to interconnected interventions beyond and within education recognizing that teachers’ work in addressing sexual violence in extreme setting exceeds the terrain of schools. The paper concludes with recommendations within schools and beyond that address teachers and the social, gendered and economic contexts which give rises to girls’ sexual vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the extent to which sub-national public officials are efficient in delivering basic education services and argues that technical inefficiencies, especially in the management of public funds for education, could potentially contribute to poor education service delivery in South Africa. A conceptual framework is proposed to show the underlying mechanisms by which these technical inefficiencies can adversely affect education outcomes. The analysis is based on two micro-level surveys that were applied at 175 public primary schools and 13 district education offices (DEOs) in two provinces in South Africa: the North-West Province and Gauteng. The analysis reveals that South Africa has a well-planned decentralised structure to administer education. However, districts have significant human resource constraints. Capacity is often lacking and record-keeping, particularly of financial information, is very poor. Lack of technical efficiency has resulted in misappropriation of funds (leakage) and extensive delays in remitting funds to schools. The paper concludes that these inefficiencies potentially affect education outcomes and therefore should be given due consideration when designing and implementing education policy reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study quantifies a year's worth of mathematics learning in South Africa (0.3 standard deviations) and uses this measure to develop empirically calibrated learning trajectories. Two main findings are (1) only the top 16% of South African Grade 3 children are performing at an appropriate Grade 3 level. (2) The learning gap between the poorest 60% of students and the wealthiest 20% of students is approximately three Grade-levels in Grade 3, growing to four Grade-levels by Grade 9. The paper concludes by arguing that the later in life we attempt to repair early learning deficits in mathematics, the costlier the remediation becomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is consensus in the international mathematics teacher education literature that teachers should, at the most basic level, have mastery of the content knowledge they are required to teach. In this paper we test this assumption empirically by analyzing the South African SACMEQ 2007 mathematics teacher test data which tested 401 grade 6 mathematics teachers from a nationally representative sample of primary schools. With items matched to curriculum grade bands, findings indicate that 79% of grade 6 mathematics teachers showed content knowledge levels below the grade 6/7 band, and that the few teachers with higher-level content knowledge are highly inequitably distributed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]