24 CHAPTER 2 Data Sources


SRN, with its main focus on the conditions of school facilities, was initially fielded in 1996. In that survey, trained fieldworkers attempted to visit all schools in the country and collected information from educators, mainly school principals. Although the survey’s coverage was found to be imperfect because some schools were not accessible during the survey preparation stage, this was the first systematic school census in the country. Schools were identified by school codes provided by provincial departments of education (EMIS codes) and by province codes, and also by latitude and longitude using a global positioning system.


Four years later, the National Department of Education conducted the second round of the survey. This time, however, data were collected through questionnaires distributed to school principals. This means of data collection alerts us to possible errors in the recorded answers, especially those concern- ing facility conditions: principals might want to attempt to get more funding by underreporting their school facilities, for example, building condition and the number of classrooms. To minimize this problem, the questionnaire was designed to elicit only changes from 1996 conditions, which were described on the distributed form.


Yet even with potential measurement errors and bias in some questions, the 2000 survey accomplished almost-perfect coverage of schools in the coun- try. In particular, fieldworkers visited those schools that were missed in SRN 1996. Unlike SRN 1996, the 2000 version does not include technical colleges and special schools, but it completely covers all primary, secondary, and combined schools. (For detailed discussions of SRN 1996 and 2000, see EduAction 2001.) The data that I use here were provided by EduAction, Durban, and the National Department of Education, Pretoria. Table 2.2 shows summary statistics. For the purpose of constructing panel data, it is important to note that EMIS codes are also available in SRN 2000. However, some provincial depart- ments of education changed their EMIS codes after 1996, and the details of the code changes are not transparent. Therefore I decided to include only provinces that used the same EMIS codes in 2000 as in 1996. As a result, Gau- teng, Mpumalanga and Northern Cape are excluded from our sample for the analysis that follows.


Another important feature of SRN 2000 for our purposes is that it asked about former departments that governed the schools under the apartheid regime. From this information, we can correctly identify the racial back- ground of each school under the previous regime. The correspondence between former departments and population groups is as follows: • Whites—Department of Education and Culture: House of Assembly • Whites—Transvaal Education Department


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