MATHEMATICS PERFORMANCE OF SOUTH AFRICAN PRIMARY SCHOOL LEARNERS - Lessons from TIMSS 2019

For reasons referred to above, the sub-samples of choice were the following: The Western Cape, Gauteng, a single group representing the rest of the provinces, no-fee schools (quintiles 1 to 3), fee-paying schools (quintiles 4 and 5 and independent schools), and the full South African sample. [...] In practice, TIMSS 2019 in South Africa was the result of the collaborative efforts of the Department of Basic Education (DBE) and the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC). [...] While 67% of learners in the rich CONTRIBUTION TO THE DIFFERENCE IN schools reaches at least the low benchmark, only 24% of learners in PERFORMANCE THAN poorer schools reaches the same benchmark. [...] Indeed, while the mean score of the rich learners places them in the upward tier of the low benchmark, that of the poor learners places them below even the low benchmark. [...] This helps isolate the OF ATTENDING PRESCHOOL effect of the same set of explanatory variates on the different ON LEARNER PERFORMANCE samples, which this paper theorises to be different due to the IN THE WESTERN CAPE – uniqueness of each sample.