Early grade repetition in South Africa: Implications for reading

Early grade repetition in South Africa has been used as a remedial strategy in the absence of comprehensive remediation approaches within the education system. Compared to other uppermiddle-income nations and certain Sub-Saharan African counterparts, South Africa has high Grade 1 repetition rates although there has been a slight reduction in repetition rates during the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the prevalence of early grade repetition, it is important to examine these patterns, the accuracy of such decisions, and whether there are potential short-term advantages of repetition for acquiring early grade reading skills, specifically decoding skills and fluency in the home language. This analysis takes a twofold conceptual approach to estimating repetition effects, conducting both same-age comparisons and same-grade comparisons of foundational reading skills. The results of same-age comparisons vary, indicating that repeaters might either lag behind their non-repeating counterparts or, optimistically, achieve comparable decoding levels. Conversely, same-grade comparisons suggest that Grade 1 repetition facilitates catching up in decoding skills to match or even surpass what non-repeaters attain prior to moving to the next grade. While short-term effects of Grade 1 repetition are potentially neutral or mildly advantageous, it's worth considering more efficient strategies for addressing educational gaps. Additionally, comprehensive analysis is needed to assess longer-term effects. The study also underscores that although early grade repetition is generally targeted at academically weaker students, it is misdirected in certain instances. Roughly 2-7% of repeaters in grades 1-3 across the examined samples met grade-specific home language literacy benchmarks prior to progression decisions, while a half to a majority of progressing students did not. This highlights the need for improvements in uniform assessment standards to better guide repetition decisions at the school level.