Publications
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Published in 2023
Published in 2018
Published in 2017
Published in 2012
Accounting for the Variations in the Quality of Primary School Education
Published Saturday, September 1, 2012
This paper reports on the use of multivariate analyses procedures to examine pupil- and
school-level factors that contributed to variations in reading and mathematics achievement
among Grade 6 pupils in 15 African school systems (Botswana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi,
Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, the Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania,
Uganda, Zambia, Zanzibar, and Zimbabwe). The data for this study were collected in 2007 as
part of the major SACMEQ III Project, which sought to examine the quality of education
offered in primary schools in these countries. (SACMEQ is an acronym for the Southern and
Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality.)
At the pupil level, grade repetition, socio-economic background, pupil age, and pupil
sex were found to be the most important factors affecting the variations in pupil achievement
in these school systems, while at the school level, school resources and school location were
identified as the important common factors. South Africa and Zimbabwe were among the
school systems with the largest between-school variation (especially in reading), while the
Seychelles and Mauritius had the largest within-school variation.
In addition, low social equity in pupil achievement was evident in South Africa,
Mauritius, and Zimbabwe, while large gender differences in pupil achievement were evident
in the Seychelles and to some extent in Tanzania and Kenya, especially in mathematics.
Implications of the findings for policy and practice are outlined.
Achievement Mauritius
Published Thursday, March 1, 2012
One of the main impacts of previous SACMEQ Studies on policy decisions in Mauritius was the adoption of a Literacy and Numeracy strategy in the early 2000s and its integration in the taught curriculum.
Progress in Gender Equality in Education: Mozambique
Published Thursday, March 1, 2012
Policy Brief Number 6
The purpose of this policy brief is to investigate whether there has been progress in ‘gender equality’ in primary education for the eleven provinces in Mozambique by seeking answers to the following specific questions
Published in 2011
Characteristics of Grade 6 Teacherss
Published Monday, December 5, 2011
In the research programmes conducted by the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for
Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) teachers were considered as the most important
human resource inputs to schooling. This paper highlights the characteristics of Grade 6 teachers
in terms of: (a) their personal attributes (such as age, gender, general education, professional
training, and teaching experience), and (b) their achievement scores in a standardized reading
test that was administered during SACMEQ II (2000) and SACMEQ III (2007) across the 15
SACMEQ school systems.
These teacher characteristics provide a succinct overview of the quality of the teaching force
across the SACMEQ education systems in 2007. The personal characteristics of Grade 6 teachers
that have been discussed in this paper are complemented with reading achievement scores in
order to provide an indication of the subject matter knowledge of Grade 6 reading teachers, and
to show the trend in achievement levels between 2000 and 2007.
The results show that there were variations in the characteristics of Grade 6 teachers across
SACMEQ school systems in terms of age, gender, general education, professional training, and
teaching experience. The results further show that for SACMEQ as a whole, there was an
increase in the average achievement scores of teachers, between 2000 and 2007. However, there
were large variations in teacher achievement scores across SACMEQ school systems. The
challenge for most SACMEQ school systems is to achieve gender equality in the composition of
teaching staff while ensuring a balance between academic education, and appropriate
pedagogical training for all teachers.