Roots and Shoots Programme Assessment

It is now widely acknowledged that most South African learners do not acquire foundational literacy and mathematics by the end of Grade 3, and that this is one of the binding constraints to progress in South Africa. 

While we know that poor-quality schooling certainly contributes to these poor schooling outcomes, evidence from a wide range of disciplines including biology, human development, educational psychology, cognitive science and economics has shown that there is a strong link between the skills that children enter school with and their later outcomes. 

Recognising this evidence, there has been a global effort toward investing in early childhood as a strategy for improving children’s later life outcomes.

Despite this evidence, we still know very little about the skill formation of learners growing up in the global South, where low quality schooling often dominates explanations for learners’ poor educational outcomes, and crowds out other potential explanations such as low levels of school readiness among children when they enter school. 

The Roots & Shoots study aims to fill this gap by measuring a sample of South African children’s early skills as they enter school, and following them across time to understand the link between these early skills and later schooling outcomes. By collecting data on children as they first enter school and then following these same children over time, we can determine to what extent the patterns of performance seen in Grade 3 can be traced back to trends already there on the first day of school.

The Roots and Shoots baseline report (2022) is available here