Browsing by Subject "schooling"

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    Essays on child labour and schooling in Ghana
    (2018) Ayifah, Rebecca Nana Yaa; Piraino, Patrizio
    This thesis consists of three papers on child labour and schooling in Ghana. The first paper examines the correlates of child labour and schooling, as well as the trade-off between work and schooling of children aged 5-17 years with the 2013 Ghana Living Standard Survey data. A bivariate probit model is used since the decisions to participate in schooling and in the labour market are interdependent. The results show that there is a gender gap both in child work and schooling. In particular, boys are less likely to work (and more likely to be enrolled in schools) relative to girls. Whereas parent education, household wealth and income of the family are negatively correlated with child work, these factors influence schooling positively. In addition, parents‟ employment status, ownership of livestock, distance to school, child wage and schooling expenditure increase the probability of child labour and reduce the likelihood of school enrolment. In terms of the relationship between child labour and schooling, the results show that an additional hour of child labour is associated with 0.15 hour (9 minutes) reduction in daily hours of school attendance; and the effect is bigger for girls relative to boys. Also, one more hour of child labour is associated with an increase in the probability of a child falling behind in grade progression by 1.4 percentage points. The second paper estimates the impact of Ghana’s Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) cash transfer programme on schooling outcomes (enrolment, attendance hours, repetition and test scores) and child labour in farming and non-farm enterprises. Using longitudinal data, the paper employs three different quasi-experimental methods (propensity score matching, difference-in-difference, and difference-in-difference combined with matching). Overall, the results show that the LEAP programme had no effect on school enrolment and test scores, but it increased the weekly hours of class attendance by 5.2 hours and reduced repetition rate by 11 percentage points for children in households that benefited from the programme. In addition, there was heterogeneity in these impacts, with boys benefiting more relative to girls. In terms of child labour, the results show that the programme had no effect on the extensive margin of child labour in farming and non-farm enterprises. However, the LEAP programme reduced the intensity of farm work done by children by as much as 2.6 hours per day. The largest impact of the programme, in terms of iii reduction in the intensity of child labour in farming, occurred in female-headed and extremely poor households. The last paper investigates the impact of mothers‟ autonomy or bargaining power in the household on their children’s schooling and child labour in Ghana. The paper uses a noneconomic measure of women’[s autonomy, which is an index constructed from five questions on power relations between men and women. The paper employs both an Ordinary Least Square (OLS) and an Instrumental Variable (IV) approach. Overall, the results suggest that ignoring the endogeneity of mothers‟ autonomy underestimates its true impact on schooling and child labour. They also show that an increase in mothers‟ autonomy increases school enrolment and hours of class attendance, with girls benefiting more than boys. The paper finds a negative relationship between mothers‟ autonomy and both the extensive and intensive margin of child labour. In addition, it demonstrates that improvement in women’s autonomy has bigger impacts on rural children’s welfare relative to urban children.
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    Experiences of post-matriculants regarding basic schooling and education in Cape Town – South Africa: qualitative study with post matriculants in Du Noon township
    (2025) Frydie, Asheeqah; Hoosain, Shanaaz
    This qualitative, explorative research study aimed to explore post-matriculant experiences about accessing jobs in South Africa. The study explored experiences about accessing jobs concerning the ease or difficulty of finding jobs for post-matriculants. In addition, the study explored those who found it easier to find such jobs based on what they went through. For those who found it hard to find jobs, the research explored reasons they found it challenging. Finally, factors attributed to finding it easier or difficult to access jobs and what can be done to make it easier for post-matriculants to find jobs were interrogated. This study used an exploratory and qualitative research design whereby 15 participants were recruited using purposive non-probability sampling. Face-to-face interviews were used in data collection. Significant findings of the research investigation concerned the post-matriculants having various experiences accessing jobs, as some found them more accessible. In contrast, others found it very difficult to access jobs. A few post-matriculants indicated they found it easier to access jobs because they had gone through tertiary education. At the same time, many of them stated that they faced challenges in accessing jobs as they had only matriculant certificates, societal pressure to succeed, mental and emotional health concerns, and a lack of necessary skills to enter the labour market. One significant implication of the research findings is that the curriculum was not properly equipping post-matriculants with the skills to successfully enter the labour market upon completion of their matriculation, hence the high unemployment rates. In conclusion, post-matriculants need various interventions after matriculation to access tertiary education and relevant vocational training and have a curriculum appropriately formulated to equip them with the skills to enter the labour market successfully. Since this research has shown that the more significant number of the people interviewed indicated that it was difficult to access jobs, it is recommended to conduct further research to make it easier for post-matriculants to find jobs. It is further recommended that policymakers be more mindful of post-matriculants' challenges and implement initiatives to ease their transition from school to the labour market.
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    TEDI 3 Week 1 - Including Children with Visual Impairement in the Classroom
    (2019-06-01) Viljoen, Hestelle
    In this video, Hestelle Viljoen, a former principal of a school of children with visual disabilities in South Africa, discusses how visual impairment affects learning in the classroom. She discusses the different kinds of visual impairment learners can experience and how their needs can be accommodated in the classroom allowing them to follow the same curriculum as sighted students. She also discusses the importance of incorporating different stakeholders (such as community members, teachers, specialists, and the students themselves), and then discusses some specific techniques that can be used in the learning environment to support their learning.
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    The impacts of parental socioeconomic status, pre-primary schooling, and productive safety nets on young children in Ethiopia
    (University of Cape Town, 2026) Sahilea, Esubalew Asmare; Keswell, Malcolm
    The thesis examines three causal questions regarding child development. Chapter 2 examines the dynamics of parental socioeconomic status for child outcomes. The key question is what are the causal effects (impacts) of parental socio-economic status. This question has not been adequately addressed in the existing literature. The chapter also explores whether parental qualities and the home environment mediates developmental gaps in child nutrition, cognition, emotion, and subjective well-being. The main finding is that family socio-economic status is an important cause of child developmental outcomes, with a stronger effect on child anthropometric measures, followed by cognitive achievement, subjective well-being, and emotional development outcomes. The self-productivity estimates reveal strong evidence of the persistence of child developmental outcomes over time. Within a domain of child development, cross-productivity is also observed, such that the current value of an outcome is highly determined by the current value of another outcome within a domain of development rather than its own lagged value. The findings of the mediation analysis demonstrate the importance of parental material investment (particularly cognitive stimulating materials) and a lower level of family stress in mediating the effect of SES on child cognitive and socioemotional outcomes, respectively Chapter 3 evaluates the impacts of pre-primary school enrollment. The focus in this chapter is on child social skills and networking, emotional development, and cognitive achievement. The key question we seek to answer is what are the impacts of preschool enrollment for child socioemotional and cognitive outcomes? We employ propensity score matching to find “statistical twins” for preschool children from non-preschool children based on observable characteristics. The main findings are that the programme has longer-term impacts on child cognition, and social skills and networking. No significant effects are detected for emotional development, but preschool duration and quality do matter. Chapter 4 then studies the impacts of the household-level social security programme. Our key question is what are the impacts on child wellbeing and cognition for participating households? We find that the PSNP increases recipient children's language skills, with a large effect for children from poor households. Our transmission analysis reveals that better nutrition and increased spending on children's books and stationery are potential pathways through which PSNP improves child language skills.
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    Towards the Design of a Networked Social Services Media Model to Promote Democratic Community Participation in South African Schools
    (2013) Monson, Michael Leslie; Brown, Irwin
    The belief that society benefits from the adoption of democratic practices and a desire to improve schooling in South Africa, motivate this research. The social objective of the research is therefore to determine what are the causes of the persistent failure of the South African schooling system and to what extent community participation may serve to resolve them. The technological objective is to determine the feasibility of utilising social media for addressing social problems through enabling participative democracy. The potential for community participation in South African schools is therefore viewed through the lens of Internet enabled participative democracy. A design science-inspired research framework is devised in a qualitative study adopting a critical interpretevist epistemology. The study entails three phases applying a mixing of methods to perform critical research, context-based evaluation and critical interpretive evaluation. The first phase reveals the fundamental problems impacting the schooling education system in South Africa and determines that the underlying cause for their persistence lies in a systemic problem of conflicting legislation and policies caused by ideological differences within the ruling tripartite alliance. It further identifies through critical inference, specific practices by school communities which could improve the education system by participative, democratic action. The second phase evaluates the capacity for selected, popularly used social media artefacts to serve as communication and collaboration tools, in the schooling context, to enable community participation. These are found to be inadequate. The third phase is an evaluation of the technologies capable of facilitating activities required to achieve democratic participation of communities in schools and results in the description of an artefact that could enable a “networked social service media” system. The paper substantiates the notion that an appropriately designed, Internet enabled social media artefact, can promote the participation of communities in schools in South Africa.