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Factors affecting the choices of Grade 12 learners What influences Grade 12 learners' decisions about their future learning and career plans? This substantive report is essential reading for those involved in higher education planning and policy-making at both national and institutional levels. Based on responses to a survey done across all nine provinces in South Africa, research focuses on learners' intentions to enter higher education and their choices around institutions and fields of study. Understanding this is crucial if the participation rate and field-of-study objectives of the National Plan for Higher Education are to be realised.

List of Tables and Figures

Executive Summary

Part One: Background to the Study

1. Origins and rationale of the study
2. Review of the literature
3. The research problem
4. The research design

Part Two: The Research Findings

5. Profile of the population
6. Learner choice: to study further or not
7. Choosing an institution
8. Choosing a field of study
9. The impact of choices on the future
10. Relative influence of factors on learner choice

Part Three: Looking Forward

11. Implications of the findings
12. Conclusion

References
Appendix: The Questionnaire

Michael Cosser is chief research specialist in the HSRC Human Resources Development Research Programme. Previously head of the Division of Standards Setting at the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA), he has lectured and worked in the Academic Staff Development Centre at Witwatersrand University. Cosser has published on SAQA and the National Qualifications Framework and in the fields of English literature and academic staff development – particularly quality assurance.

Jacques du Toit is senior researcher in the HSRC Human Resources Development Research Programme. He has taught sociology at the universities of Pretoria and Stellenbosch and has worked on large-scale quantitative socio-economic surveys in Gauteng and local economic development studies in the East Rand.