A Review of Challenges in South African Education and Possible Ways to Improve Educational Outcome as Suggested by Decades of Research

Abstract

Despite many positive developments in South Africa (SA), the education system and educational outcome face many challenges and require further improvement. This is reflected by elevated school dropout rates and suboptimal annual pass rates in various grades (Grades 7?12). Over the years, a plethora of studies has identified methods through which academic performance/educational outcome can be improved. However, from a practical point of view it might be difficult to implement these methods in for example a classroom or school, particularly because these methods are mainly discovered upon thorough online literature searches, and therefore published methods to improve educational outcomes are not always within reach of schools or teachers. Our aim is thus to provide a review paper that contains a collation and overview of the possible methods that can be used by various education stakeholders in order to contribute to better educational outcome. Essentially, we are attempting to...