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Introduction: The initial response of higher education institutions (HEIs) to the COVID-19 pandemic was to shift to online learning as a contingency. However, not all students were equipped with the appropriate resources to make this shift. Research problem: There is scant contemporary research outlining the types of educational resources leveraged by students at a private HEI (PHEI) in South Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic. This limits the ability of PHEIs to develop targeted approaches for student success during similar disturbances. Methodology: Using a quantitative research design, an online survey was administered to second-year to postgraduate students at a PHEI in South Africa. Of the 44715 total student population at the PHEI, a sample size of 387 was targeted, with a total of 239 students responding to the survey. Key findings: The study found that most students had access to resources during emergency remote learning (ERT), with family playing a key role in providing human and financial resources to the student, while the PHEI provided key material resources. Textbooks, data/Wi-Fi, laptop/computer, and mobile phones/smartphones were considered critical, with administrative and academic support staff, online lecturers, videos, and textbooks/eBooks playing a key role in the students' academic performance. Conclusion: By understanding the educational resources (i.e. human, material and financial) that were leveraged by students during COVID-19, PHEIs can streamline decision-making regarding operations, assistance provided to students, and manage online learning in a manner that mitigates pitfalls should events similar to the pandemic occur.

In line with international trends in early childhood care and education (ECCE) recognising the importance of early learning, the Department of Basic Education in South Africa has pledged to professionalise the sector, increase access and improve quality. From a systemic point of view, professionalisation of the sector will require collaboration on multiple levels between various stakeholders working in different systems to bring about simultaneous improvement in conditions of employment, resource provision, and infrastructure development. To aid the government in supporting skills development in this sector, particularly for those servicing the most indigent populations, we employed a multi-method design to determine critical skills gaps and how they could best be addressed. Data were gathered through online questionnaires, a desktop review and focus group and individual interviews. Thematic analysis revealed the need for managerial training, practical learning opportunities for practitioners, the necessity for more home-based ECCE services and systemic improvement. Based on the findings, we make suggestions of how key stakeholders could partner to best address these needs.

The study examined the role of COVID-19 pandemic as a catalyst for fostering reformed pedagogy in science education within the South African context. The prevalence of COVID-19 pandemic compelled teachers as key agents of educational change to fundamentally rethink their pedagogical practices with a view to bring about reformed pedagogy. The study adopted a phenomenological design located within the critical paradigm. The empirical investigation involved 21 purposively selected in-service science teachers enrolled for postgraduate studies in science education at a South African university. Critical theory was adopted as a theoretical lens to provide insightful elucidation into how science teachers negotiated and transformed their pedagogical practices in response to the formidable challenges posed by COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic critically exposed socio-economic disparities in science teaching and learning within the broader South African context. Under-resourced schools represented inappropriate educational entities which rendered encouragement of critical thinking and promotion of innovative pedagogical practices extremely difficult to realize. Science teachers at under-resourced schools were largely left to their own devices when navigating formidable challenges posed by the prevalence of COVID-19 pandemic. This dilemma represents a structural problem that ought to be addressed as a matter of priority in order to ensure social justice in terms of the creation of conducive teaching and learning environments at under-resourced schools in particular. Meaningful transformation of pedagogy remains an arduous task in the face of fundamental challenges afflicting teacher professional growth and its ramifications.

Background: Scholars have long emphasised the complexities and difficulties of educational policy transfer as educational systems develop path dependent. Purpose: The case study of the Quality Physical Education (QPE) pilot project in South Africa aims to show that besides a lock-in effects in national educational policies, decoloniality, that is, a decreasing acceptance of policy approaches from the Global North in the Global South creates new transfer obstacles. Methods: The case study employs a process-tracing research design. The policy revision process of the QPE project is examined in detail. Data sources include governmental reports and minutes, 17 semi-structured interviews and field notes of participant observations. The data were analysed by qualitative inductive and deductive coding. Findings: The QPE project failed in its ambition to reinstate PE as standalone subject because it proved impossible to solve the substantial coordination and resource allocation problems between different ministries, the university and the school sector. The project never gained policy salience as it ignored the more fundamental problems of the educational system and the everyday experiences of South African communities. Moreover, South African stakeholders perceived the project as patronising and neo-colonial. Hence, the project rather reinforced the existing policy path, which is focused on sport as extra-curricular school activities rather than PE. Conclusion: While the QPE pilot project seems to have catalysed a discussion on PE among South African stakeholders, the failure of the QPE project might indicate a growing resistance against asymmetrical policy transfer from the Global North.

In this article I report on the findings of an empirical study conducted to show the merits of integrating equitable learning by members of the South African School Governing bodies (SGBs) in managing the physical and financial resources. Within the interpretivist paradigm and utilising a qualitative descriptive phenomenological design, the data generation followed the use of an unstructured questionnaire administered to a sample of 30 participants purposefully sampled. Adopting a social justice perspective as the lens, we unpack the necessity of learning equity in the SGB's dealing of school resources. The study was guided by the following key research question; How can South African schools embrace the learning equity agenda in managing their physical and financial resources? The findings show that adopting such principles of equity in learning as integrating diversity in the equitable deployment of the physical and financial resources goes a long way towards entrenching social justice in managing the resources. The key conclusion was that unless members of the SGBs adopt an equitable mechanism for allocating these resources in the face of competing priorities, real equitable learning remains elusive. The recommendations include the need for adopting policies designed to deal with the complex relationships between concerned stakeholders in the provision of guidelines for public-school funding -- most of which come from public budgets.

The disparity in the socio-economic status of South Africa has forced the government to adopt a funding policy for public secondary schools. The policy is based on funding schools considered to be poor because they are in poverty-stricken communities. Most of these schools lack infrastructure, and physical and financial resources to be run successfully, while the former Model C schools have adequate resources. In this article I advocate for equitable funding for all learners, and the role played by the school governing body (SGB) in the management of funds is also identified. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 6 members of the SGB from 2 secondary schools in the Vhembe district of the Limpopo province, South Africa. The participants who were purposefully sampled were 2 SGB chairpersons, 2 treasurers and 2 secretaries. The findings suggest that the SGBs were aware of their financial management roles but did not execute their roles effectively. They lacked the knowledge and skills to perform their roles. The SGBs require mandatory training from the Department of Education. It is also suggested that a qualified financial management expert is included in the membership of every SGB.

Since the advent of democracy in 1994, access to quality and equitable education still remains a challenge in the Gauteng province. As an intervention to improve access and quality of learning in all schools, especially township schools, the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) declared schools across Quintiles 1 to 3 throughout the province to be no-fee schools. In this article we examine various GDE pro-poor intervention programmes, the effects of a progressive school funding policy, and efforts to achieving equity through improved resource allocations. It is essential to assess the progress of the GDE's explicit pro-poor education policies towards promoting equity and equality in education, with particular focus on the performance of Grade 12 learners in no-fee schools. One of the findings of the study reported on here reveals that, although the GDE faced challenges in implementing the no-fee policy at school level, there has been progressive improvements in the standard of education as reflected in the Grade 12 results of no-fee schools.

Equity and redress, in and through education, are fundamental commitments of the new South African democratic government that ensued in 1994 after a brutal and protracted history of colonial and apartheid segregation and oppression denied the majority black population the fundamental right to equitable and quality education. A raft of ambitious and far-reaching policies were put in place to achieve these laudable goals. Yet more than 26 years after the ending of colonial and apartheid rule, the South African education system, and society in general, remain, far from equal -- made apparent by the current COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper we take a critical (re)look at South African education governance and funding policies, considering why the South African Schools Acts (SASA) and the National Norms and Standards for School Funding (NNSSF), first promulgated in 1997 and 1998 and subsequently amended, have not delivered as expected on the promises of equity, redistribution and redress. The paper advances conceptual flaws, operational failures and implementation naivety as to why these promises have not been realised, advocating for an alternative social justice model for school governance and funding.

Equitable funding of public schools to reduce the disparities in education inherited by the post-apartheid government of South Africa in 1994 has become a priority. The Amended National Norms and Standards for School Funding (ANNSSF) required the ranking of schools into one of five quintiles of which Quintile 1 represents the poorest schools and Quintile 5 the most affluent. This amendment determines that schools serving impoverished communities should receive more funding. However, challenges exist regarding the implementation of the system, as well as the calculation base for maintenance allocation. In this study we used semi-structured interviews to collect data from 24 respondents from urban and township schools in Gauteng. Participants were selected by means of purposive sampling. Permission to conduct the research was obtained from the Gauteng Department of Education, the university's Ethics Committee and the school governing bodies. We handled financial information from schools with utmost confidentiality. We identified themes from interview transcriptions and we analysed schools' financial statements. The main findings relate to inaccuracies in quintile ranking, which result in inadequate and unfair school funding, which impact on schools' maintenance and learning and teaching. It is recommended that a more holistic approach should be followed to achieve equity in education.

This study investigates the relationship between resource provisioning and learners' performance in public schools in Limpopo province, South Africa. The education production function theory was used to address a set of policy questions such as: how much will outcomes improve if resources are increased by some amount? Or can schools deliver better outcomes with existing resources? Or will better outcomes require more resources-efficiency? This quantitative study used a survey of four validated questionnaires distributed to 272 representatives from the school principals, heads of departments, teachers, and school governing bodies. The sample was drawn from 68 public secondary schools from different quintiles (1 to 5) in Limpopo province using a probability stratified and purposive random sampling technique. Descriptive and Pearson correlation statistics were used in data analysis. The findings indicate that resource provision was shown to be to the determinant of learners' performance in public schools. Specifically, the findings indicated that the way in which school resources are allocated, distributed, and utilised have an influence on learners' performance. As a result, the study recommends that a review of resource provision is a factor that the Department of Basic Education, including stakeholders, should pay more attention to in order to improve learners' performance in public schools.

Because dominant social work is mismatched to many contexts, alternative practice and educational approaches have emerged. To highlight educational examples, this phenomenological study explores the experience of 28 Canadian and South African educators teaching alternative social work. These educators conceptualized a multidimensional, integrated, contextualized framework that attends to power and resistance, and extends critical social work education by its focus on the local context. Their pedagogy included experiential, intentional, relational, reciprocal, and participatory, dialogical, land-based, reflective, and reflexive aspects. Their accounts illuminate the importance of developing personal intent, appropriate policy environments, adequate resourcing, and an activist social work body toward entrenching contextualized social work education. Considerations for implementing contextualized social work education in other contexts are discussed.

Early childhood development and education (ECDE) is devolved in Kenya, which means that each of Kenya's 47 counties budgets for and implements ECDE independently. Kenya provides two years of preprimary education to children ages four and five. Given scarce resources, constructing facilities and hiring teachers are often principal considerations for county governments. The present study investigated whether and how counties go beyond the basic provision of facilities and teachers to invest in learning materials, expand teacher professional development, and hire coaches to improve the quality of teaching. These results are presented in the context of the Tayari ECDE program, which was designed to improve school readiness in a cost-effective way. We present qualitative findings from several counties to describe how government bodies invest in additional elements of preprimary quality improvement. We also compare results across counties that do and do not implement the Tayari model to understand whether implementation of an effective program to increase ECDE quality encourages adjustments in government resource allocations. In addition, we present quantitative results from a large-scale longitudinal treatment and control study of the Tayari model, which tested the effectiveness of curriculum-aligned instructional materials and teacher training and support in improving learners' school readiness in public and low-cost private learning centers. Finally, we present policy implications for decentralized government structures responsible for providing ECDE, noting how these can be supported and incentivized to increase investments in ECDE quality.

Limited research has been done to date on the extent of public funding of Open Educational Resources (OER) within basic education (K-12 equivalent) in South Africa. As claims have been made about the potential cost reductions that come with using OER, this study aimed to establish a benchmark of public spending on educational resources, uncover how much is being spent on OER and assess cost-savings of OER adoption. A desk review and document analysis of official information sources on South African basic education was conducted to develop a conceptual understanding of funding allocations the South African government uses for educational resources. A review of publicly available government reports and budgets showed that there is insufficient information at this time to determine how much is being spent on OER specifically or to act as a benchmark for potential cost savings of OER. This study highlights the information gaps which would need to be filled in order to make claims about OER and their potential as cost savers.

While acknowledging higher education's complicity in inequality, the premise of this paper is that curriculum transformation can be one means of challenging and dismantling structural injustices towards the goal of equity of access and outcomes. Fraser's multi-dimensional framework for social justice is drawn upon to explore what this transformation requires. The framework is used to critique a particular case of curriculum intervention, Education Development in South Africa. In Fraser's terms, the interventions have been largely affirmative, not transformative. In addition, they have focused on only the first dimension of justice, redistribution, and have generally failed to attend to misrecognition and representation. Overall, we argue that the responses of higher education institutions in South Africa to the challenges of a globalised, pluralist world have been affirmative, not transformative. A transformative approach demands a 'reframing' of the curriculum. This involves adjusting the scale of the problem, interrogating assumptions informing the norms of the curriculum, questioning current boundaries between 'mainstream' and 'other' students and reviewing the fitness of the curriculum for a pluralist society. The paper concludes with recommendations for what such a reframing of the curriculum might entail.

The government's educational reforms since 1994 have focused on equity and redress. Redressing historical imbalances and achieving equity are fundamental policy mechanisms in attempts to restructure South African education. This aspiration is demonstrated in many education policies including the National Norms and Standards for School Funding (NNSSF) policy. While inequalities in resource allocation from the state have been removed, inequalities persist due to the inability of the state to provide free education to all, parents' inability to pay user-fees, the unavailability of qualified teachers in rural schools and unfavourable learner-teacher ratios. A quantitative research was conducted to investigate the implications of the NNSSF policy on equity in public schools in the Tshwane West District of the Gauteng Province. Based on the three first order factors derived from the first analytic procedure, namely, "The effective financial management", "The management of equity issues" and "Access to educational resources", it was found that despite substantial government interventions in the education system, equity has not been fully realised.

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.

African teachers in general and South Africans in particular face tremendous challenges, several of which are curriculum related. These challenges manifest themselves at various levels and in various areas, that is, from national level to within the classroom. There are various role players who may make a contribution towards overcoming these challenges. It is imperative that each role player must be able to make a significant contribution. Clair and Adgers (2001:17) are of the opinion that school reform efforts must ensure that schools become centres of excellence for all students. This creates certain challenges for teachers, and in turn, demands a certain empowerment of them in order to achieve the vision of excellence in a diverse society with diverse needs (Carl, 2002:03). The purpose of this study was to explore the challenges experienced by South African teachers in the school curriculum and the causes of their poor performance in the teaching-learning situation. It became evident that some of the challenges are as a result of current and recurrent changes in the school curriculum. The researcher used a qualitative research methodology whereby a case study design was followed. The study used purposive sampling where four schools including both primary and secondary schools from the Eastern Cape (hereafter referred to as EC) Province were selected as sites for the study. EC Province is more disadvantaged in terms of resources as compared to the other Provinces in South Africa. Four teachers from each school were chosen as respondents. Data was collected through interviews and observations. Although the study was conducted in EC, it became evident from the findings that it is still a mammoth task country wide for teachers to implement the curriculum effectively. In the South African context, the problem manifests itself in a special way and the question remains, namely, what challenges do teachers in primary and secondary schools experience? The following challenges were identified when research was conducted; inadequate resources, a poor career path, HIV and AIDS pandemic, contractual employment, low remuneration, heavy workload and placement. These are critical issues of compliance if South Africa is going to overcome its past and build a culture of learning and tolerance that embraces and defines its political and educational future. The imbalances of international influences at the expense of teachers need to be rigorously redefined at school level. The study recommends that the National Ministry of Education (MOE) should have some mechanisms in place for remedying this unenviable situation.

The governance of teachers during apartheid in South Africa was characterised by high levels of disparity in teacher distribution and in conditions of labour. In the post-apartheid context policies and interventions that govern teachers are critical, and teachers can be seen to be placed in a central role as actors whose distribution, employment, recruitment and deployment can serve to redress the past, promote equity and build trust for social cohesion. In this context, this paper examines several teacher governance mechanisms and interventions, namely the post provisioning norm and standards (PPNs), the Funza Lushaka Bursary Programme (FLBP), and the South African Council of Educators. The analysis suggests that undifferentiated policy frameworks for teacher governance result in measures that weakly account for differing contextual realities and persistent inequality. Additionally, the emphasis on technocratic measures of accountability in teacher governance interventions constrains teachers' agency to promote peace and social cohesion.

The government has made great strides in redressing past imbalances in education through the National Norms and Standards for School Funding (NNSSF) policy that focuses on equity in school funding. This NNSSF model compels the state to fund public schools according to a poverty quintile system, where poor schools are allocated much more funding for resources than affluent schools. Using qualitative research, school management teams, school governing bodies and principals of six public schools located within the Gauteng West District were interviewed to determine their views of how the NNSSF policy had been implemented. One of the findings revealed that equity in public schools has not been fully achieved since funding provided by the state is insufficient to address the backlog in educational resources. It is recommended that the state abandons the policy of funding schools according to quintile rankings but instead, fund schools based on resource needs.

This article synthesises findings from two systematic reviews that examined evidence of the link between large-scale assessments (LSAs) and education policy in economically developing countries and in countries of the Asia-Pacific. Analyses summarise evidence of assessment characteristics and policy goals of LSAs that influence education policy, when LSAs are used in the policy-making cycle and types of education policies impacted, and factors that influence the use of LSAs in policy-making. Results show national assessments conducted at both primary and secondary school levels to have an impact on education policy. LSAs are used more often for monitoring education quality and equity purposes followed by accountability purposes. International assessments are more often used to leverage policy priorities than other assessment types. LSAs feature mainly at the monitoring and evaluation stage of the policy cycle. The education policies impacted by LSAs relate considerably more to curricular reforms and performance standards as well as assessment bodies and activities and far less to resource allocation and teaching and learning policies. Finally, whereas the quality of assessment programmes facilitate impact, financial constraints and uncertainty as well as weak assessment bodies hinder the impact of LSAs on education policy.

We take an innovative approach to estimating student mathematics learning in the sixth grade of three African countries. The study reinforces the notion that beyond the quality of the teaching process in classrooms, national contextual factors are important in understanding the contribution that schooling makes to student performance. Our approach enhances more typical cross-sectional production function estimates in three ways: (1) to respond to critiques that production function estimates usually do not include classroom processes, we measure both teacher characteristics and teaching process variables and include them in the model; (2) to more clearly identify student learning with schooling processes, we estimate the gain in learning associated with a student's exposure to teaching characteristics and processes during the sixth-grade academic year in each country; and (3) to begin to address the issue of possible "national institutional factors" influencing student achievement, we use a comparative approach to approximate and initiate discussion of "country fixed effects."

The purpose of this investigation was to examine, from a cross-cultural perspective, students' epistemological patterns of reasoning about socioscientific issues (SSI), and to identify potential interactions of cultural and scientific identity. Mediating factors associated with students' argumentation and discourse about SSI, as well as the public's understanding of science, has been identified as an important area of investigation in the field of science education. This mixed-methods design included over 300 students from Jamaica, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan, and the United States. Students responded to instruments designed to assess their epistemological conceptualizations and justifications related to distributive justice, allocation of scarce medical resources, and epistemological beliefs over five dimensions related to scientific knowledge. Four iterations of a coding scheme produced over 97% inter-rater agreement for four independent coders. Results indicate there is a consistent trend toward epistemological congruity across cultures within inductively derived themes of: (1) Fairness; (2) Pragmatism; (3) Emotive Reasoning; (4) Utility; and (5) Theological Issues. Moreover, there were no discernable differences in terms of how students from these countries presented their beliefs on the sub-categories of each of the five major categories. It appears that students displayed a high degree of congruence with respect to how they frame their reasoning on this SSI as well as their justifications for their epistemological beliefs. There were statistically significant differences regarding the ability to raise scientifically relevant questions among countries. Commonalities as well as distinguishing characteristics in epistemological orientations are compared and contrasted and connections to a model of socioscientific reasoning with implications for research and pedagogy are discussed. (Contains 7 tables and 3 figures.)

Integrated reporting (IR) is a major development in a number of sustainability-related accounting initiatives and, if widely adopted, will require significant developments in professional and university accounting curricula. These will include: a strategic rather than operational or transactional focus; longer- rather than short-term outlook; prospective rather than retrospective analysis; qualitative commentary as well as quantitative information; and reports on wider business performance metrics rather than on narrower external financial reporting data or audit compliance. This paper reports on ACCA's support of and response to the latest initiatives in IR, in particular the impact this will have on the education and training of accountants in order to reflect these new principles to prepare the twenty-first-century accountant for a much more challenging role in the near future. These developments can only be in the wider public interest of improving the relevance of information for decision-making, for all stakeholders, and allow greater efficiency in the allocation of financial and other resources and in adding public value.

In an attempt to demonstrate the relevance of workplace learning (previously known as "cooperative education") in guiding student and curriculum development, this article presents findings from a research project on the current practice of workplace learning, drawn from an analysis of evaluation reports in a university of technology. Areas of improvement associated with current planning, implementation and evaluation of workplace education are outlined and reflected as student and curriculum development issues. The article calls for an alignment of academic and workplace practices for the mutual benefit of students and workplaces, for the use of the principle that workplace learning should be appropriate for a qualification and for interaction between the university and the workplace. The article also reflects on institutional attempts to address the shortcomings of current practice in response to the Higher Education Qualifications Framework (HEQF). Suggestions for improving workplace learning are also outlined. The article encourages partnerships, collaborative curriculum development and evaluation research and calls for a national strategy for managing the quality of workplace education. (Contains 1 table.)

The paper has a twofold structure and focus. The first part is an examination of the funding challenges facing African universities resulting mainly from public finance difficulties, and the second part is a case study of how some Kenyan and South African public universities have attempted to mitigate resource dependence difficulties through multiple exchange relationships. The study identifies economic and policy contexts, and institutional capacity, both scientific and management capacity, as key determinants of the success of public universities' attempts at economic self-determination. The study concludes that although revenue diversification presents an opportunity for universities to mitigate resource dependence difficulties, a combination of factors, especially small domestic markets and capacity related challenges, constrain possibilities for meaningful revenue diversification for many African universities.

Previous studies on the role of the school in influencing attainment in South African schools have concluded that the inequalities which are known to exist in these are still largely due to the legacy of the Apartheid system. More recently, policy focus has been on narrowing the gap between the attainment of different socio-economic groups by addressing the inequality in school resource levels and facilities. The work presented here investigates which pupil background, school context and school resource (human and physical) factors affect individual academic attainment by developing separate multilevel models for individual learners of similar socio-economic status. This approach allows for the possibility that different in- and out-of-school factors combine to explain the differences in attained mathematics and reading scores of Grade 6 pupils participating in the SACMEQ II survey in 2000, and that this could be dependent on the socio-economic status of the individual learner. It is argued that policy focus should be wider than just resourcing levels. The evidence points to the need to additionally target deprived, mainly rural, neighbourhoods and develop interventions and alternative strategies to overcome some of the acute social disadvantages that pupils, especially from the lowest socio-economic status, bring with them into school. These include poor nutrition, lower fluency levels in the language of instruction used in schools and higher chances of living away from home in order to be schooled. (Contains 4 notes, 4 tables, and 3 tables.)

This paper examines a range of historical and geographic factors that determine the quality of public school education in post-apartheid South Africa. Empirical analysis shows, first, that population groups are still spatially segregated due to the legacy of apartheid, which implies that, given the positive correlation between school quality and school fees, quality education is concentrated in formerly white, coloured and Indian schools in areas where the majority is non-African. Second, school quality, measured by the learner-educator ratio, improves as school fee and government subsidy increase. In this sense, school fee can be decreased with an increase in government subsidy to maintain school quality. It is also shown that government subsidy is allocated to schools with lower quality and fees, increasing the number of subsidized teachers. To address the current imbalance, financial support to disadvantaged locales and schools should be strengthened further. (Contains 3 figures and 3 tables.)

Central to the pursuit of education and its functions like assessment, is social justice. Given the (still) existing inequalities brought about by years of neglect, it is clear that the building of a just society is indeed fraught with challenges. This article explores the extent to which all learners in South Africa are afforded fair treatment and an impartial share of what the education system through assessment practices can offer them. In attempting to illuminate this issue, we will start by providing a brief overview of assessment policy initiatives and the current assessment system in South Africa. This will be followed by a conceptual analysis of assessment practices and their social justice implications for learners by using Cribb and Gerwitz's (2003) key dimensions of social justice, namely the distribution of educational resources, recognition and respect for cultural differences and participation. Through this analysis we conclude that, while acknowledging the massive impact of family/community circumstances and poor educational provision, unfair assessment practices as discussed remain an important dimension of the degradation of social justice in the South African education system. Many learners, despite efforts to ensure more just assessment practices, are still marginalised and do not reap the benefits that can support them in developing their full potential.

This article analyses the National Plan of Higher Education (NPHE) and argues that the NPHE mainly uses formal concepts of social justice in bringing redress and equity to the higher education. It further argues that the plan could meaningfully and better address issues of equity and redress by employing substantive forms of justice. Firstly, the article will focus on the constitutive meaning of social justice and the two notions of social justice known as the normative and the substantive notions. In doing this, preference will be accorded to the substantive understanding of justice that prioritises human capability development over and above the formalistic approach of social justice that mainly considers access as a priority. Secondly, the article will discuss Section 3 of the NPHE in relation to the ideals of social justice that it promotes and further reveals its formalistic limitations. The article further discusses the weakness of the institutions of higher learning in promoting substantive social justice, particularly in the case of South Africa, as a consequence of the conceptions of justice in use and concludes by examining how the implementation of (NPHE) can assist institutions of higher learning in promoting social justice.

According to a recent study, institutions of higher learning in South Africa fail to a great extent to integrate the key management functions that are fundamental to effective quality management. This article argues that the effective promotion of quality of a university's core business depends to a large extent on the ability of an institution's subsystems to function as interdependent components. The notion of integration concurs with the fundamental principles of the systems theory. This article demonstrates from a systems approach the integration of quality management, planning and resource allocation as fundamental elements in enhancing the quality of an institution's core business. (Contains 1 figure.)

Changes in the higher education landscape have led to many higher education institutions reassessing their recruitment and marketing strategies. A proper understanding of the relative importance of the choice factors that prospective students consider when selecting a higher education institution will enable higher education administrators and planners to allocate funds, time and resources more efficiently and effectively. The research aimed at identifying the choice factors that discriminate between different ethnic student groups within South Africa when they go through the process of selecting an education institution. A convenience sample of 1 241 respondents was drawn, representing six public South African universities. The findings indicated that the multi-cultural nature of an institution and the opportunities for a social life on campus were the two most powerful discriminators between the two ethnic groups. The results can aid university administrators and planners in developing effective marketing and recruitment strategies to attract students from different ethnic groups. (Contains 2 tables.)

This article reports on an empirical study of the management of curriculum and instruction in South African secondary schools. Drawing on data collected from 200 schools in 2007, a series of regression analyses tested the relationship between various dimensions of leadership and student achievement gains over time. Whilst the research confirms what we do know about school management in South Africa, and aligns with much of the international research base, the strong emphasis that emerges on school-community relations offers important insights for school management development. (Contains 2 tables and 2 notes.)

This article investigates budget monitoring and control in township schools in South Africa. The enactment of the Schools Act 1996 revolutionized school financial management in South Africa, making it part of the drive for democratic school governance. School governing bodies had to be established, whose responsibility it became to manage finances at school. Schools were allowed to raise funds over and above the departmental allocations, which to township schools were increased in order to redress past imbalances. However, most of these school governors lacked the necessary financial knowledge, skills and competencies required to effectively manage large sums of cash, and as a result many schools experienced financial difficulty. This study investigated the way in which a group of township schools in South Africa monitor and control their budgets. The findings revealed that the level of education plays a significant role in the way in which budget monitoring and control is perceived. It was concluded that, if applied conscientiously, the schools can remain liquid in terms of cash flow and operate within the confines of the approved budget. (Contains 6 tables, 1 figure and 2 notes.)

The performance management of higher education institutions is a major challenge for many countries. Such institutions deliver mostly a social as opposed to an economic return, and cannot be evaluated using the same approach as is applicable to a business enterprise. Many countries have developed rather complex and elaborate approaches to this challenge and South Africa is no exception in this regard. The Department of Education, which has the responsibility for managing the country's higher education institutions, has recently revised its evaluation framework, the results of which are used to determine the annual core grants. Although the performance indicators are appropriate to the desired policy objectives, implementation of the framework has been distracted by other objectives of the department. In this article it is shown that funding allocations based on the new formula do not correlate with performance and it is therefore inevitable that the framework will lead to unexpected and undesirable outcomes. At a time when South African institutions are struggling to maintain their competitive position within the global community of universities, this reaction will be extremely unfortunate. (Contains 9 figures, 4 tables and 3 notes.)

The new public sector community development workers (CDWs) programme was established in 2004 following ineffective service delivery through chronic under-spending on annual budgets in post-apartheid South Africa. CDWs receive training in learnerships within the National Skills Development Strategy to ensure access to and spending of local government poverty alleviation funding allocated for housing, childcare grants, and pensions and other services. As learnership mentors are mandatory, this research investigates the formal mentoring of CDWs after learnership programmes. CDWs and their mentors from two large municipalities participated. The main findings show inadequate formal mentoring of CDWs despite legislative requirements. Crucial mentoring for career development and psychosocial support is patchy and uneven. Social transformation of communities and access to government services and grants is likely to take longer than anticipated if CDWs are not adequately mentored during their training and in workplace learning. (Contains 3 figures and 1 table.)

This article measures targeting of public spending on school education in South Africa for the years 1995 and 2000. Equalisation of publicly subsidised pupil-teacher ratios in this period largely eliminated discrimination in subsidies per child, but some differentials in subsidies still remain as a result of differences in qualifications and experience, and hence salaries, between teachers in more and in less affluent schools. However, despite these differentials, education spending is now quite well targeted to the poor, even in an international context. Despite improved equity in distribution of fiscal resources, equity of educational outcomes remains elusive, particularly when education quality is also considered. This emphasises the importance of improving efficiency in schools, particularly in poor schools.

A major task of South Africa's new government in 1994 was to design a more racially equitable education system. This article evaluates progress towards this goal using three concepts of equity: equal treatment by race, equal educational opportunity, and educational adequacy. The authors find that the country moved quickly towards a race-blind system, including race-blind policies for allocating state funds to schools. Progress measured by the other two criteria, however, has been constrained by the legacy of apartheid, including poor facilities and lack of human capacity in schools serving black students, and by policies concerning school fees. The article concludes with some thoughts on the future outlook.

In almost every dimension, South Africa has undergone dramatic changes since the end of apartheid. Public education in South Africa has been completely transformed from an amalgam of separate and highly unequal educational systems, defined in terms of the race and place of residence of students, into a unified system based on the principle of providing equal access to high quality education to all South Africans. This article traces the changes in education finance that have occurred since 1994, especially the decentralization of financial responsibility for primary and secondary education to nine new provincial governments, though most funding flows from the national government to the provinces. The author assesses the success of the government in meeting its constitutional mandate to provide all South Africans with a "basic education," paying particular attention to the challenges of (a) allocating adequate resources to schools serving the nation's historically disadvantaged students and (b) finding an appropriate mix of school fees paid by parents and public funds. (Contains 3 tables, 1 figure and 70 footnotes.)

This article reports on the experiences of the Kimberley Thusanang Project (KTP). It proposes that the project's use of a database system as a management tool represents a significant development in the design of effective education projects in South Africa. The article describes how this system assists project management in overcoming two key challenges: (1) blending accountability pressure with support and (2) optimizing the allocation of project resources.

Examined the relative efficiency of 10 South African universities between 1994 and 1997 using the analytical review technique. Identified the relatively efficient, relatively inefficient, and least efficient. Important efficiency factors include student population dimensions, quality and deployment of personnel resources, and allocation of recurrent expenditures. Suggests that their graduates may differ, and offers benchmarks for best practice. (EV)