This paper analyses gender differences in South Africa’s TIMSS Grade 9 mathematics achievement, with particular emphasis on the role of gendered grade repetition and dropout patterns in contributing to an apparent pro-girl gap in mathematics achievement. I make use of Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition analysis to decompose the observed pro-girl gap in ...

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 ...