Digging into education stats

Statistician-General Pali Lehohla with President Jacob Zuma. Picture: Thobile Mathonsi.

Statistician-General Pali Lehohla with President Jacob Zuma. Picture: Thobile Mathonsi.

Published Oct 11, 2016

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In my article of September 4, I focused on the flows and stocks of university education graduates by race and by level of income. The emphasis in elucidating the situation was the use and application of time plots. The rationale for using time plots is that they exhume the live history of the living and capture its totality as they traverse education, the subject of this article and the three issued before.

My focus this time is one reflecting on live history of high school education. This is represented by the four race groups, namely black, coloured, Indian and white and three income categories in which the individuals are members of households where household annual income ranges from less than R600 000, R600 000 to R800 000 and above R800 000.

At lower levels of education, the numbers are more meaningful and so the four race groups can be presented. In the previous column dealing with university education I excluded Indians and coloureds in the analysis, because of data limitations.

Figure 1 on the right provides progression ratios of those who completed grade 12 after completing grade 9 and they are in households, the income per annum of which is less than R600 000. White people have high levels of participation, hovering around 0.80, and Indian people caught up with them at similar levels around 2001.

Black and coloured people have had rates that are lower averaging 0.45 and 0.53, respectively. These ratios have shown relative stability for these two population groups in this income category, while for Indian and white people there have been greater swings.

Figure 2 represents similar race groups, but for an income category that is at R600 000 to R800 000 per annum. Here the progression ratios are all above 0.60. All population groups had reached proportions above 0.60.

Turning point

However, the period of the Soweto uprisings of 1976 does show the extent to which the progression ratios plummeted for black, coloured and Indian people and remained intact among white people. Another period of a downward turning point impacting on population groups has been 1994 for coloured and white people, 1997 for Indian people and 1998 for black people.

All population groups, except black people, were able to recover their progression ratios and reach their pre-turning point levels by 2001. As for black people they were on a decline that saw them reach the 1974 levels of 0.64 from a high of 0.89.

Figure 3 reaffirms the assertion made in Figure 2, wherein those with incomes of R600 000 to R800 000 cluster in the range of progression ratios that are above 0.75. Evidence relating to this income category suggests that their progression ratios were not impacted by the period corresponding with the Soweto uprisings, except for the Indian population group, which shows a steep dip downwards from about 1973, reaching the lowest in 1982 and recovering to reach a peak in 1987. There was a later wave of decline in progression ratios that seized all population groups in the 1990s.

From all the population groups, except black people, the wave of declining progression ratios recovered. This was with a turning point among Indian people in 1997, white people in 2001 and coloured people in 2005. Black people remained in monotonic decline, reaching levels that are lower than those experienced by the R600 000 to R800 000 income band and showing no signs of recovery by 2008.

Figure 5 depicts progression ratios of persons who completed grade 12 after they have completed grade 9 living in households earning R800 000 or more per annum by population group, IES 2010 to 2011.

Education progression ratios do not only tell us about how successive cohorts of students live as students and or adults today performed across time and space, but can be mapped against major political events, as well as the often toxic race and economic relations that continue to vex our land.

These ratios provide a transformative lens through which we can understand the force of demography as a carrier of social artefacts, of culture, family formation and life creation, changes in education policy, politics, economics, historical advantage and disadvantage, prejudice and the ­challenges of getting society and a nation to work.

Perhaps even the uneasy subtleties which burst out into the topic of black girls' hair in the Model C and private schools can be traced in these time plots as they define what and who we are becoming as a nation.

I end the column by asking three critical questions.

First, why is it that at the income levels lower than R600 000 per household are coloured and black schools performing significantly poorly compared with their white and Indian counterparts? Is race a proxy for a lot more we are yet to unveil? Given that the numbers in these township schools account for a substantial proportion of the school population, yet their progression ratios are stable at a meagre 0.53 into matric after standard nine, and given that they contribute lower proportions towards tertiary education attainment, less than 0.04, how and when is the situation going to change in order for South Africa to change its fortunes?

Second, those perceived to be high income earners among black people, reflect an emergent trend of progressive declines that move as low as those observed in low income groups. In this regard they contribute just under 0.1 in those with tertiary attainment. Although double the 0.05 of the less than R600 000 for this same population group, the performance is far lower than their white counterparts who are at 0.46. In fact, this income bracket performs lower than the income bracket of white people who have less than R600 000 per annum. These white people have a progression ratio double that of black people. The question then is whether this black middle class has the wherewithal to reproduce itself?

Third, is there something else affecting the performance of black children in the Model C schools causing them to monotonically decline? Why is it that especially their Indian counterparts show rapid incremental growth in progression ratios, yet they also suffered discrimination during apartheid?

Dr Pali Lehohla is the statistician-general of South Africa and the head of Statistics SA

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