Early grade repetition in South Africa - Implications for reading - By Gabrielle Wills

Are their benefits of early grade repetition for early grade reading? Tracking a Grade 1 cohort of Setswana home language learners from EGRS I, the identified relationship between early grade repetition and early grade reading outcomes is found to differ depending on the approach and estimation strategy used to estimate repetition effects. [...] In the second estimation, the effects of repeating the 3rd or 4th year of school on average annual gains in home language reading fluency over the 3rd and 4th year of school are estimated, conditioning on whether the student repeated Grade 1 in 2016. [...] In application to the EGRS I data, Grade 1 decoding skills for non-repeaters assessed at the end of 2015 are compared to Grade 1 decoding skills of repeated learners assessed at the end of 2016. [...] Decoding skills in the first two years of school: Alphabetic knowledge and isolated word reading in home language Estimates of the relationship between Grade 1 repetition and students’ alphabetic knowledge levels at the end of the 2nd year of school (2016) are shown in Table 5 using EGRS I data. [...] DISCUSSION The paper's primary aim was to enhance our understanding of the value and costs of early grade repetition trends in South Africa and to examine the accuracy of progression and repetition determinations within the Foundation Phase (grades 1-3).