Hacia la construcción de un modelo para la implementación de la PNMGP para el MRE

The bimodal distribution of learner performance in South Africa is a social regularity that has been proven using a wide variety of datasets. Various authors have shown that two largely distinct educational systems are functioning within the South African context and that the bimodality can be expressed as a function of school language, wealth quintile, geographic location or the historical administrative system under which the school operated (Bhorat & Oosthuizen, 2009; Fleisch & Christie, 2004; Spaull, 2013; Taylor, 2011; Van der Berg, 2008). Bimodality in school quality is a reflection of the ‘two nations in one country’ notion, one nation that is affluent and has access to high-quality services and the other (the majority of the population) poor and largely deprived of quality services (Mbeki, 1998).

This clear distinction in school quality originates from the separate administrative systems under which schools had to function during the Apartheid era and, more specifically, the unequal resource allocation linked to these administration systems. Since the advent of democracy, massive strides have been made in ensuring a more equitable distribution of funding to previously disadvantaged schools (Fiske and Ladd, 2004; Van der Berg, 2009). Despite significant redistributive transfers in the post-Apartheid era, the administrative system under which schools were controlled remains one of the main determinants of a school’s overall performance, even two decades after the abolition of these systems. Van der Berg (2008) describes these two groups of schools as functioning under “separate data generating processes”, thereby proposing that two unique sets of parameters drive the performance in these two systems.

A number of studies has focussed on determining whether a learner’s future outcomes are affected by attending a higher performing school. Internationally, studies from Ghana (Ajayi, 2014), Malawi (De Hoop, 2010), Romania (Pop-Eleches and Urquiola, 2013) and Trinidad and Tobago (Jackson, 2010) have found positive effects of learners attending higher performing schools due to selective admission. Studies in Kenya (Lucas and Mbiti, 2014), the United Kingdom (Clark, 2010) and the United States (Abdulkadiroglu, et al., 2014), however, find very limited effects of attending private or elite high schools.

In the South African context two studies have been conducted to estbalish the benefits of attanding former advantaged schools, of which both studies found a robust positive effect (Coetzee, 2014; Shepherd, 2016). It is, however, recognised that transferring all poorer performing learners to better performing schools is not a sustainable solution and therefore much of the policy focus in South Africa has been on improving the weaker performing schools rather.

101 The unresponsiveness of educational outcomes in previously disadvantaged schools to increased resource inputs has given rise to a wide range of literature on how effectively schools can convert resources into learner academic achievement. The research conducted over the past two decades unequivocally agrees that resources on their own will not necessarily lead to improved learner performance, but that the ability to utilise these resources efficiently is the key to learner academic improvement. Economists refer to a school’s ability to convert resources into outputs as ‘school efficiency’. Pioneering this research in South Africa, Crouch and Mabogoane (1998) show that even after statistically controlling for resources, 30% of the performance of schools remains unexplained. More specifically, they showed that after controlling for resources, poor learners in poor schools perform significantly worse than their peers in rich schools. Using the rich SACMEQ III dataset, Van der Berg (2008:153) concludes that more resources have not nessasarily improved learner outcomes, but that “resources mattered only conditionally”. Using decomposition techniques, Shepherd (2013) also finds that 19% of the test score gap between English or Afrikaans schools and African Language schools remains unexplained after controlling for learner, household and school characteristics, and ascribes this portion of the test score gap to school efficiency.

The issue researchers now face is to determine those factors that are required to achieve school efficiency. Crouch and Mabogoane (1998:4) ascribe their unexplained ‘residuals’ broadly to ‘managerial factors’. Gustafsson (2007) shows that the correct allocation of teaching and management time is beneficial to learner performance. All things held equal, he shows that more teaching time is related to better test scores, but that less teaching time (and therefore more time managing) for the principal is associated with better learner performance. He also shows that certain teaching methodologies have a positive impact on learner scores, regardless of the number of years of training a teacher has received. Using the National School Effectiveness Study, Taylor (2011) found that an organised learning environment, proxied through evidence of curriculum planning, a functional timetable, low teacher absenteeism, up-to-date assessment records, quality inventories of LTSM, the effective coverage of curriculum and the completion of exercises, positively contributed to learner performance. Teacher quality and administration- related resources that add to more effective managerial functioning were also important factors in determining school performance (measured in Grade 12 pass rates) (Bhorat and Oosthuizen, 2009).

Most of the school effectiveness studies conducted in South Africa have disaggregated schools by whether they were previously disadvantaged or not. These methods of disaggregation cluster all previously disadvantaged schools together, assuming that the same data-generating process determines school outcomes among these schools. This assumption precludes differentiation

102 between higher-performing and low-performing previously disadvantaged schools. A sample of poor schools, however, manages to some extent to overcome socio-economic disadvantage and produce higher learner outcomes. Understanding the mechanisms and parameters that allow these schools to translate their resource inputs into academic achievement efficiently, could be key in assisting and supporting other low-income schools overcome their socio-economic disadvantage.

International literature on high-performing, high-poverty schools originates mostly from the charter school literature in the United States (Angrist et al., 2013; Dobbie and Fryer, 2011; Hanushek et al., 2007), and mostly focusses on the debate as to whether these schools are more effective than public schools. A few studies that are more qualitative in nature focusses specifically on the factors associated with high-poverty, high-performing schools. Common characteristics emerging from these studies include strong leadership, high-quality teachers, a strong focus on instruction and regular learner assessment (Carter, 2000; Kannapel et al., 2005; McGee, 2004; Scheerens, 2013). In developing countries, studies additionally focus on the role of low-fee private schools in providing better schooling in low-resourced contexts (Andrabi et al., 2009; Lucas and Mbiti, 2014; Muralidharan and Kremer, 2006; Muralidharan and Sundararaman, 2013). However, there is a gap in the literature with regard to examining the success drivers of higher-performing, poor schools in the developing country context.

A few qualitative studies in South Africa have compared small samples of relatively better - performing schools with relatively worse-performing schools. Similar to the international literature, strong instructional leadership and increased instructional time are shown to be important characteristics in well-functioning schools (Fleisch and Christie, 2004; Taylor et al., 2013a). The Ministerial Report on ‘Schools that work’ broadly found that more motivated schools with dedicated staff and busy learners generally performed better in the National Senior Certificate (Christie et al., 2007). Hoadley et al. (2009) posit that the role of the School Governing Bodies (SGB) as a supporting agent to the school leadership contributes positively to learner performance, and also found curriculum coverage and management of LTSM to be strong predictors of school performance. Furthermore, in-depth interviews in six schools that performed above the average in systemic tests revealed that higher-performing schools are associated with “more complex division of labour and stronger classification of roles, professional forms of solidarity, epistemic authority and stronger framing over order and reproduction” (Hoadley and Galant, 2015:21).

103