Academic Resilience in Challenging Contexts: Evidence From Township and Rural Primary Schools in South Africa
Stellenbosch Working Paper Series No. WP18/2018Publication date: November 2018
Author(s):
[protected email address] (Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University)
Poverty is considered a risk factor that jeopardizes children’s academic performance. However, even in high-poverty contexts there are students who manage to achieve consistently good academic results. This paper uses a resilience framework to identify and describe the characteristics of students from South African rural and township primary schools who perform above demographic expectations in reading comprehension. We use a rich longitudinal dataset of over 2600 Grade 6 students that contains information on institutional and individual protective factors, including students’ socio-emotional skills (perseverance, aspirations, and attitudes toward school). The longitudinal dimension of the data provides a unique opportunity to not only identify consistently higher achievers, but also students whose literacy skills improved significantly more than their peers during a school year. After accounting for differences in socio-economic status and other home background factors such as English language exposure, we find that resilient students differ significantly from their lower-achieving peers along various dimensions. Students’ socio-emotional skills emerge as particularly strong correlates of academic resilience. Although individual-level protective factors appear to be the strongest determinants of academic resilience, classroom factors such time-on-task and the availability of texts also play an important role. These findings add to our understanding of factors associated with academic success in challenging contexts.
JEL Classification:J20; J24; J25
Keywords:Student achievement; Exceptional performance; Literacy; South Africa
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Monday 28 July 202512:00-13:00
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18 Jul 2025 Encouraging data, but messy politics while US tariff deadline loomsThe big global data prints of the week came on Tuesday, with better-than-expected Chinese GDP growth for Q2 and US core CPI coming in lower than expected, but still (finally) reflecting some signs of tariffs being passed on to consumers. Locally, the uptick in mining production and retail sales was positive for Q2 GDP dynamics. In addition to the data,...
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