26 CHAPTER 2


• African—Venda Education Department • All races—New schools established after 1994, New Education Department


Under the post-apartheid regime, children of any racial origin can attend any school. In our analysis, those schools established after the end of apart- heid are grouped as “new schools.” It should be emphasized here that, even though schools are sorted by former departments, the period covered by our analysis falls after apartheid. Therefore, all schools are theoretically race- free in both 1996 and 2000. However, the reality of the racial composition of learners did not change substantially until 2000. The majority of formerly African schools are still in communities that are predominantly African, so the learners in those schools are still mostly African. Some formerly white schools now accept children from African families that have relatively high incomes and reside within commuting distance. Therefore—although my focus on population groups is approximate, as it does not reflect the exact racial composition of each school—I can capture the essence of social distance across racial groups in South Africa, where most schools and communities are still racially homogeneous even after apartheid.8


Empirical Findings


Three types of empirical analyses are conducted here. First, I statistically characterize the distributions of LERs in 1996 and 2000 in different popula- tion groups. Cumulative distributions of LER are compared and Kolmogorov- Smirnov tests are used for statistical comparisons of LER distributions of formerly African schools with other schools. Second, I depict the relationship between changes in educators and learners for each population group. Third, I conduct a panel analysis that differences out fixed effects to estimate the response of the number of learners to the number of educators.


Distribution Comparison


Figures 2.1 and 2.2 show LER distributions in public primary and secondary schools for 1996 and 2000, respectively. Primary (grades 1–7), junior primary


8 However, the information on former departments is available only in SRN 2000, not in SRN 1996. It is therefore necessary to merge SRNs 1996 and 2000 by EMIS and provincial codes in order to group schools covered in SRN 1996 by population group. As a result of this merging process, excluding Gauteng, Mpumalanga, and Northern Cape for the reason mentioned earlier, nearly 10 percent of primary and secondary schools in SRN 1996 do not match those in SRN 2000. In the panel analysis of dynamic changes from 1996 to 2000 and in the cross-sectional analysis of differences across population groups in SRN 1996, I use only those schools that were correctly matched between SRN 1996 and SRN 2000.


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