Education Inequality Economics of Education Hons Nic Spaull

Education & Inequality Economics of Education (Hons) Nic Spaull Nicspaull. com 6 May 2014

Overview of today’s lecture 1. DEFINITIONS – How do we define inequality? 2. SIZE – How large are income/education inequalities? 3. DIMENSIONS – Unequal access/quality/inputs/outcomes? 4. LINKS – What are the links between educ ineq & inc ineq? 5. PERSISTENCE – Why is inequality so persistent? 6. CONCLUSIONS – What can be done going forward?

Education & Inequality: DEFINITIONS How do we define inequality? Income inequality? Earnings EDUCATION Political inequality? Power relationships How does education influence these inequalities? Inequality of opportunity? Access / life chances Social inequality? Class Race Gender Language

What do we mean when we say inequality? • Unequal access to education? – EFA movement, gender equality? • Unequal access to quality education? • Unequal ability to benefit from quality education? – More stringent definition of equality (see Fiske & Ladd, (2004) Equal treatment, equal educational opportunity, educational adequacy) • Unequal inputs? • Unequal outcomes?

Education & Inequality: SIZE How large is income inequality in South Africa? Is it increasing/decreasing over time? Leibbrandt et al 2010

How large are educational inequalities?

Quantifying learning deficits in Gr 3 Figure 1: Kernel density of mean Grade 3 performance on Grade 3 level items by quintiles of student socioeconomic status (Systemic Evaluation 2007) (Grade-3 -appropriate level) 16% Only the top 16% of grade 3 students are performing at a Grade 3 level • 51% 11% Following Muralidharan & Zieleniak (2013) we classify students as performing at the gradeappropriate level if they obtain a mean score of 50% or higher on the full set of Grade 3 level questions. 7

Taylor, 2011

NSES question 42 NSES followed about 15000 students (266 schools) and tested them in Grade 3 (2007), Grade 4 (2008) and Grade 5 (2009). Grade 3 maths curriculum: “Can perform calculations using appropriate symbols to solve problems involving: division of at least 2 -digit by 1 -digit numbers” 100% Even at the end of Grade 5 most (55%+) quintile 1 -4 students cannot answer this simple Grade-3 -level problem. 90% 35% 80% 70% 59% 57% 55% 60% 50% 40% 13% 14% 15% 20% 13% 10% 12% 10% 16% 19% 17% Q 1 Q 2 Q 3 Q 4 30% 13% Still wrong in Gr 5 14% Correct in Gr 5 Correct in Gr 4 39% 0% Correct in Gr 3 “The powerful notions of ratio, rate and proportion are built upon the simpler concepts of whole number, multiplication and division, fraction and rational number, and are themselves the precursors to the development of yet more complex concepts such as triangle similarity, trigonometry, gradient and calculus” (Taylor & Reddi, 2013: 194) Q 5 Question 42 (Spaull & Viljoen, forthcoming) 9

Insurmountable learning deficits: 0. 3 SD South African Learning Trajectories by National Socioeconomic Quintiles Based on NSES (2007/8/9) for grades 3, 4 and 5, SACMEQ (2007) for grade 6 and TIMSS (2011) for grade 9) 13 12 11 10 Effective grade 9 8 Quintile 1 7 Quintile 2 6 Quintile 3 Quintile 4 5 Quintile 5 4 Q 1 -4 Trajectory 3 Q 5 Trajectory 2 1 0 Gr 3 Gr 4 (NSES 2007/8/9) Gr 5 Gr 6 Gr 7 Gr 8 Gr 9 Gr 10 (SACMEQ 2007) Projections (TIMSS 2011) Actual grade (and data source) Gr 11 Gr 12 Projections Spaull & Viljoen, 2014 (SAHRC Report) 10

Of 100 students that started school in 2002 16% Do not reach matric 49% 24% Fail matric 2013 Pass with university endorsement 2013 11% • 550, 000 students drop out before matric • 99% do not get a non-matric qualification (Gustafsson, 2011: p 11) • What happens to them? 50% youth unemployment. 11

Dropout between Gr 8 and Gr 12 2013 Matric passes by quintile Matric pass rate by quintile Matric passes as % of Grade 8 (2009) Bachelor passes as % of Grade 8 (2009) 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 68% 49% 42% 37% 36% 10% Quintile 1 • • • 75% 73% 70% 15% Quintile 2 92% 82% 12% Quintile 3 39% 17% Quintile 4 Quintile 5 Of 100 Gr 8 quintile 1 students in 2009, 36 passed matric and 10 qualified for university Of 100 Gr 8 quintile 5 students in 2009, 68 passed matric and 39 qualified for university “Contrary to what some would like the nation and the public to believe that our results hide inequalities, the facts and evidence show that the two top provinces (Free State and North West) are rural and poor. ” (Motshekga, 2014) 12

Numerous correlated dimensions Education & Inequality: DIMENSIONS • Given the apartheid-era policies, it is unsurprising that the inequalities we see in South Africa can be seen along a number of correlated dimensions, including – – – Language, Geographical location, Socioeconomic status, Race Former department

Language. . . PIRLS 2006 PIRLS Gr 5 (Shepherd, 2011) pre. PIRLS 2011 pre. PIRLS Gr 4 (Howie & Van Staden, 2012) 600 531 525 520 480 440 452 443 436 429 428 425 461 463 407 400 395 388 360 320 280 240 En g Af lish rik aa n si. S s w at i isi Z u isi Nd lu eb e isi le Xh se osa ts w an Se a so t Xi ho ts o Ts nga hi ve nd a Se pe di So ut h Af Bo rica ts w a Co na lu m bi a pre. PIRLS reading score 2011 560 576 Test language

By Gr 3 all children should be able to read, Gr 4 children should be transitioning from “learning to read” to “reading to learn” Red sections here show the proportion of children that are completely illiterate in Grade 4 , i. e. they cannot read in any language

Former department… NSES 2007 -9 (Taylor, 2011) Taylor, 2011

Socioeconomic status. . . SACMEQ III (2007) Distribution of student reading scores by quartiles of school socioeconomic status (Spaull, 2013) TIMSS Science (2011) Average grade 8 science test scores for middle-income countries participating in TIMSS 2011 (+95% confidence intervals around the mean)

Geography/space… Spatial inequalities • “Geography becomes critical when access to opportunities is distributed unevenly over space” (Yamauchi, 2011) • Under apartheid limited movement for nonwhites • Positive correlation between school quality and school fees, quality education remains concentrated in formerly white, coloured and indian schools where the majority is non -African. • Current (de facto / de jure) zoning policies Yamauchi, 2011

Bimodality – indisputable fact PIRLS / TIMSS / SACMEQ / NSES / ANA / Matric… by Wealth / Language / Location / Dept… 19

Education & Inequality: LINKS • We can see that SA is unequal, but what are the generative and propagating mechanisms of that inequality? – Spatial segregation & differential physical access to labourmarkets – Even when individuals do have access to labour-markets many lack the currency (skills) to transact • • ECD Primary & secondary Tertiary Labour-market Possible to intervene at each stage. When is it best to intervene and how? Taxes? BEE? ECD?

Elusive equity Quality of education Duration of education Type of education SA is one of the top 3 most unequal countries in the world Between 78% and 85% of total inequality is explained by wage inequality Wages • IQ • Motivation • Social networks • Discrimination

Labour Market • • • Mainly professional, managerial & skilled jobs Requires graduates, good quality matric or good vocational skills Historically mainly white • Vocational training • Affirmative action Low productivity jobs & incomes • • • University/ FET High productivity jobs and incomes (17%) Often manual or low skill jobs Limited or low quality education Minimum wage can exceed productivity 17% • • High quality secondary school Type of institution (FET or University) Quality of institution Type of qualification (diploma, degree etc. ) Field of study (Engineering, Arts etc. ) High SES background High quality primary school Some motivated, lucky or talented students make the transition - Semi. Skilled (31%) Unskilled (19%) Low quality secondary school +ECD Minority (20%) Big demand for good schools despite fees Some scholarships/bursaries Unequal society Majority (80%) Low SES background Low quality primary school Unemployed (Broad - 33%) 22 cf. Servaas van der Berg – QLFS 2011

The impact of SES on reading/maths (SACMEQ III – 2007 Gr 6) • Almost 40% of SA student reading achievement can be explained by socioeconomic status (31 assets, books, parental education) alone. • In South Africa socioeconomic status largely determines outcomes (with a very small number of exceptions – see newspapers for those exceptions) • Indication of wasted human capital potential (see Schleicher, 2009) Spaull, 2013

Education & Inequality: PERSISTENCE • Distribution of (and control over) productive resources (& inheritance) determine the levels of inequality in society Low quality education – Labour (NB Education) • About 80% of total income ineq is explained by wage inequality – Capital – Inheritance laws/practices – Social networks • • Formal (nepotism/patronage) Informal (in-group discrim) Low social mobility Hereditary poverty

… 280 -550 AD – Migrants from E-Africa first farmers in Africa 1488 - Bartholomeu Diaz 1652 - Jan van Riebeck 1688 - French Hugenots HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA IN 5 MINUTES 1795 Cape Colony Annexed (British) 1948 -1994 - Apartheid | 1994 -2014 - DEMOCRACY NB Inertia & institutional memory, especially for social institutions like schools and universities

Education & Inequality: CONCLUSIONS • South Africa is the most unequal country in the world • Education is unlike the other areas of social policy in that it has the greatest potential to change the GENERATIVE mechanisms of the income distribution rather than just reallocate some of the wealth once already earned. • Education is the generative mechanism that the State has most control over RE policy in that there is the least resistance to reform (compared to changing inheritance laws for example). • Without understanding/acknowledging that educational inequality is at the heart of income inequality it’s naïve to think you can change the distribution of income.

Questions • If not the quality of education, what is the driving force behind income inequality? – Demand-side factors > supply-side? ! • Why is it so difficult to change educational outcomes? (20 years since 1994!) • What are the key interactions between education and health/social-security?

References & further reading • • Fiske, E. , & Ladd, H. (2004). Elusive Equity: Education Reform in Post-apartheid South Africa. Washington: Brookings Institution Press / HSRC Press. Fleisch, B. (2008). Primary Education in Crisis: Why South African schoolchildren underachieve in reading and mathematics. Cape Town. : Juta & Co. Donalson, A. (1992). Content, Quality and Flexibility: The Economics of Education System Change. Spotlight 5/92. Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations. Taylor, S. , & Yu, D. (2009). The Importance of Socioeconomic Status in Determining Educational Achievement in South Africa. Stellenbosch Economic Working Papers. Van der Berg, S. , Burger, C. , Burger, R. , de Vos, M. , du Rand, G. , Gustafsson, M. , Shepherd, D. , Spaull, N. , Taylor, S. , van Broekhuizen, H. , and von Fintel, D. (2011). Low quality education as a poverty trap. Stellenbosch: University of Stellenbosch, Department of Economics. Research report for the PSPPD project for Presidency. Spaull, N. 2013. Poverty & Privilege: Primary School Inequality in South Africa. International Journal of Educational Development. 33 (2013) pp. 436 -447 (WP here) Spaull, N. 2013. South Africa’s Education Crisis: The Quality of Education in South Africa 19952011. Centre for Development and Enterprise.