Learner performance in the 2009 to 2014 final Grade 12 mathematics examination: A quantile regression approach

Although the apartheid era ended in 1994, South Africa still remains one of the most unequal countries globally (Adjaye-Gbewonyo et al., 2018; NPC, 2011). This inequality has extended into its education system and has largely contributed to the unequal educational opportunities for learners from different backgrounds (Graven, 2014; Ogbonnaya & Awuah, 2019). To redress the legacy of inequality in the education context, the schooling system is divided into government (public) schools and independent (private) schools. According to the South African Schools Act (No. 84 of 1996), public schools should be funded through public funds, while independent schools may apply for subsidies from their relevant provinces (Dass & Rinquest, 2017; Franklin, 2017). For the purpose of financial allocations, government schools have been grouped according to the socio-economic status of the community within which the school is located, into five national quintiles (NQ), from NQ1 to NQ5. Each of these quintiles caters for 20% of the learners nationally, based on a ranking of the socio-economic status, which is measured by the income, unemployment rates and illiteracy within the school’s catchment area. Schools in the poorest communities are classified as NQ1, with those in the wealthiest communities classified as NQ5 (DBE, 2006; Moses, Van der Berg, & Rich, 2017; Western Cape Education Department [WCED], 2018). Schools classified as NQ1 to NQ3 are non-fee-paying schools; these schools receive relatively more funding per learner compared to NQ4 and NQ5 schools (Dass & Rinquest, 2017; Graven, 2014). However, the accuracy in the classification of these quintiles has been questioned as the classifications are based on the socio-economic status of the school’s surrounding areas rather than the status of the households of the learners that attend the school (Ally & McLaren, 2016; Dass & Rinquest, 2017). Further concerns on the classification of the quintiles have been raised and discussed in the work of Hall and Giese (2009), Mestry and Ndhlovu (2014), among The South African education system bears evidence of fluctuations in the final Grade 12 mathematics marks occurring across different learner profiles. This study reflected on the National Senior Certificate (NSC) mathematics results from the Western Cape Education Department for the years 2009 to 2014, the period just after the introduction of the NSC in 2008 and including the updated NSC introduced in 2014. Accordingly, this study aimed to examine the learners’ performance by socio-economic school quintile and education district for the period of 2009 to 2014, for learners in the Western Cape. Instead of the ordinary regression model, we adopted the quantile regression approach to examine the effect of school (national) quintile (NQ) type and education district at different quantiles of learner performance in the mathematics examination. The results showed that there is a significant school quintile type and education district effect on learner performance in NSC mathematics examinations for learners in the Western Cape. In some years, there were no significant performance differences between learners from NQ2 and NQ4 schools in the different quantiles. Similarly, learner performance differences for NQ3 and NQ4 schools were not significant. As we moved from 2009 to 2014, the performance difference between the lower school quintiles and the upper school quintiles narrowed, although the performance differences remained significant. These differences were smallest in 2013. This is a good sign, as it indicates that government efforts and policies, designed to narrow the historical social disparities manifested in the schools, have been somewhat successful. The identification and scrutinising of school quintile type and education district where the gap is wider will assist the government to review policies and interventions to accelerate the transformation.