Fifty-three percent of Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning in low- and middle-income countries despite an investment of between 33-49% of education expenditure on primary education. Teaching children to read in the early grades is fundamental to building resilient education systems, as the ability to read early in life is a great predictor…

This paper interrogates the complexity of language use at the Grade Three-Four transition, using the South African context as a microcosm of similar educational systems. The paper describes the complex nature of the transition, particularly within a second language (L2) instructional context. It explores the dissonance between and among theory,…

PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) is the fourth assessment in the current trend series, following PIRLS 2001, 2006, and 2011. There were 61 participants in PIRLS 2016, including 50 countries and 11 benchmarking entities (e.g., regions of countries as well as additional grades or language groups from the participating…

Few developing countries participate in external educational evaluations. Information gaps on education quality make it imperative to expand such evaluations. Furthermore, international comparability across different evaluations should be improved. In addition, data from evaluations must be combined with data on access or coverage. Finally,…

Initial teacher education (ITE) serves as a bridge between prospective teachers exiting the school system to enrol in teacher education faculties, on the one hand and newly qualified teachers (NQTs) who are embarking on a career in schooling on the other. The present paper describes the language and thinking skills student teachers bring to their…

Much hope is placed on education systems to reduce socio-economic learning gaps. However, in South Africa, uneven functioning of the school system widens learning gaps. This paper analyses education performance using ANA data. Weak calibration and inter-temporal or inter-grade comparability of ANA test scores limit their usefulness for measuring…

Results on the PIRLS test in 2006 make it clear that South African educators need to examine the way in which they teach literacy in the Foundation phase. While the test gives a fair indication of what our children cannot do, it is less clear about what they can do. Mastery of decoding, for example, is assumed and children are tested on their…

Bullying in the intermediate school phase was studied, using the Revised Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire (R-OBVQ). The total sample comprised 360 grade 4 to 6 pupils from English-medium, single-sex schools in Bloemfontein, South Africa. To ensure a more homogeneous sample, the grade (grades 4 to 6) and race (black and white) of the participants…

According to the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), American students' math performance deteriorates during their middle school years. While our fourth graders compare favorably with fourth graders around the world, by high school only students in South Africa and Cyprus do worse in mathematics.

This paper presents an argument that language-use in multilingual mathematics classrooms in South Africa is as much a function of politics as it is of cognition and communication. It draws from a wider study focusing on language practices in intermediate multilingual mathematics classrooms in South Africa. In the study the notion of cultural…