The term ‘shadow education’ is widely used in the international literature to refer to after-school tutoring programmes (Zhang and Bray, 2020: 335). This paper investigates the prevalence of after school programmes in South Africa, focusing on extra maths lessons not provided by the school. Since 1995, the TIMSS results have consistently reveal ...

That girls continue to be underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), is of concern both for the future of work and for the reduction of labour market inequalities. This study employs distributional analysis to investigate the relationship between attitudes towards mathematics and achievement for grade 9 girls and ...

Quality school leadership and management is an important determinant of quality teaching and learning, especially in low-resourced schools. According to South Africa’s national development plan (NDP), principals should provide both administrative and curriculum leadership at schools. This paper investigates the improvement between 2015 and 2019 G ...

The Third International Mathematics and Science Study(TIMSS) is the largest and most ambitious international study of mathematics and science achievement ever undertaken, with more than 500,000 school students in 45 countries being tested in mathematics and science at five different school year levels. South Africa is the first country in Africa to ...

The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) is the largest and most ambitious international study of mathematics and science achievement ever undertaken with more than 500,000 students in 41 countries being tested in mathematics and science at five different year levels. South Africa is the first country in Africa to have particip ...

A person’s belief in their ability to succeed in a particular situation – their self-efficacy – has a strong impact on their behaviour. As a result, understanding self-efficacy is a key component when interpreting achievement results. In the pursuit of improving South African learners’ achievement in science, Sylvia Hannan and Andrea Juan e ...

The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) was first conducted in South Africa in 1995, and every four years since then, except 2007. The long history of TIMSS in the country provides important evidence of the health of the education system, international comparisons with other countries, and trends over time; as well as al ...

In this newsletter we share a number of recent journal articles and book chapters that used TIMSS South African data. These publications provide insights into achievement trends over time and contextual variables that are related to South African learners’ achievement.

Post release of the TIMSS 2019 results, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) and the TIMSS and PIRLS International Study Center released the TIMSS 2019 International Data Repository and Infographics. We share these links and other relevant resources with you.