Black people’s deceleration post-2000 worrisome
APROGRESSION ratio is a time-dependent graphical representation of cumulative stock of acquisitions. A progression ratio is a time plot that measures cumulative progress of a status such as education and this is measured across time by age. Its measures perform well for permanently acquired attributes such as education and they perform badly on variable phenomena such as income earned, employment and nuptiality status.
In my article on September 13 titled “Society is at variance with data on education in SA” I opened the discussion on the five Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) pillars but mainly focusing on two of these namely, Meeting Basic Needs and Building our Human Resources. In this edition like in the previous one I will use evidence from the 2016 Community Survey in reporting on the performance of education. Time machine Griff Feeney a demography professor indulging in time plots, made an important conclusion that a census is a time machine. The 2016 Community Survey, like all censuses before it is also a time machine. I use the knowledge base from this large-scale survey in order to understand the extent to which South Africa is succeeding or otherwise in building its human resources.
The discussion is not necessarily new, but what is important is to dismiss some of the earlier uninformed remarks made as regards differential performance by race at tertiary education by notably Mr Spaul and Dr Taylor. In this analysis I include four time plots based on completion of primary schooling, Grade 9, Grade 12 and a tertiary qualification. In each of the cases, the time plot is based on the proportion of those who completed a subsequent level, given that they had completed the previous one. For instance we plot the proportion of those who proceeded to complete a tertiary education given that they successfully completed Grade 12. In all cases this is presented by race. I express no view on the quality of education.
Figure 1 shows that the doors of learning opened to all South Africans. And all races that entered the schooling system ultimately had an equal chance of completing their primary education. This is an important first step in building human resources. The graph, however, also shows the glaring disparities that characterises the past, whereby white people as opposed to all other race groups have had unparalleled access to primary education. Most glaring a disparity is that primary school coverage reached at least 90 percent of those that are alive as of 2016 from as early as the 1940s compared to under 30percent of those alive by 2016 among black people.
Figure 2 provides temporary insights on performance by race at Grade 9. The graph affirms the relative privilege of white people over decades and the catching up that other races had to make in the more recent past. Only Indians have been able to catch up with white people, while black and coloured people have remained lower in completion of Grade 9.
Figure 3 shows that the challenge in completing grade 12 is greater among black and coloured people as a group at about 50percent compared with Indians and white people at about 82 percent by 2016. The historical privilege appropriated by white people in education as an asset continue to play itself in this situation as well whereby we see the gap of the 1950s between white people on the one hand and Indians, black and coloured people on the other. This includes the slow and plateauing attempt at catch up by especially black and coloured people from 2000 to present.
Figure 4 provides insights on tertiary progression ratios. The figure below, unlike all graphical representations shows a trend that is divergent with Indians and white people not only showing higher level but an acceleration in progression ratios thus better performance in completion rates. In contrast black and coloured people show low base effect and deteriorating progression ratios.
What is more worrisome is that although from the mid-sixties the progression ratios had base effect differences between black and white people there was a positively accelerating slope. This showed that there was an increasing progression ratios among black people up to 1985. The rate of change was almost similar to that of white people.
However, post-1980 the following racial trends have emerged. Especially for white people there was an inflection upwards and this was also witnessed among Indians. Among black people there was a monotonic deceleration in progression ratio and this decelerated at an accelerating rate post-2000 where it was also joined by accelerating coloured progression ratio deceleration.
It will be interesting to hear what Mr Spaul and Dr Taylor have to say against this science based numerical evidence of the precarious challenges of the RDP promise of building our human resources.