​The PhD oral defence of Ms Lilenstein (Economics), with the dissertation title Education Access, Quality, and Equity in a Developing Country Context, will take place on Tuesday, 30 May 2023 at 15:00. 

Abstrak 

The research presented in this thesis has been predicated on the definition of a successful education system as one which prioritises and achieves full access, high quality and deep equity. All three of these axes are necessary for an education system to be functional both for society and to fulfil its role as a fundamental human right.

New conceptual and empirical tools are adapted and created to provide the language and methodologies with which to understand, discuss, and analyse education systems along these axes. The first analytical chapter herein highlights the importance of accurate measurement tools, with a specific focus on sample selection bias in the context of low access when measuring education quality and equity.

Chapter 3 provides a new way to accurately measure changes in basic education funding – which is critical to quality and equity in South Africa – in the presence of changing input costs, which are not captured in traditional inflation measures. Chapter 4 uses an established measure of racial homogeneity in a new dataset to capture the changes in school demographics over time.