Evaluation of the Readucate Pilot Project in the Northern Cape Province

Final report

Although Africa is the most under-supplied region of the world for electricity, its economies are utterly dependent on it. There are enormous inequalities in electricity access, with industry receiving abundant supplies of cheap power while more than 80 per cent of the continent's population remain off the power grid. Africa is not unique in this respect, but levels of inequality are particularly pronounced here due to the inherent unevenness of 'electric capitalism' on the continent.

Elusive Equity documents South Africas efforts to create a racially equitable state education system from the ashes of apartheid education. Edward Fiske and Helen Ladd describe and evaluate the strategies that South African policy makers have pursued in their quest for equity. They draw on previously unpublished data, interviews with key officials, and visits to dozens of schools to describe the changes made to school financing, teacher allocation, governance, curriculum, and other areas.

It is generally accepted that the gap between the earnings of unskilled and semi-skilled workers on the one hand, and skilled and highly skilled workers, on the other, narrowed in South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s. This paper investigates whether the gap between the real earnings of highly skilled and low-skilled workers in the formal sector of the South African economy continued to narrow after this countrys transition to democracy.

The connection between poverty and lack of education seems entirely self-evident, yet real progress in overcoming the obstacles to education and economic affluence has eluded governments and social activists worldwide for decades. This book interrogates the link between education and poverty reduction and highlights the role of cross-sectoral co-ordination and policy coherence in breaking the poverty trap.