University : University of Johannesburg UniLearnO is not sponsored or endorsed by this college or university.
Country : South Africa
Assignment Task
 


Policy analysis: role of evidence and stakeholders
Instruction: For this assignment, you will perform evidence and stakeholder analysis for one policy: grade retention/progression policy in South Africa.In 1998 the Department of Education adopted the Admission Policy for Ordinary Public Schools which stipulates that the guideline for repetition is “one year per school phase where necessary” (Department of Education, 1998). This implies that a learner who fails any grade in a single phase for the second time cannot be retained in that grade and should be allowed to progress to the next grade. Progression can, therefore, be used to prevent a learner from being retained in a phase for a period exceeding four years, provided that the underperformance of the learner in the previous grade is addressed in the grade to which the learner is promoted. The grade progression policy has been largely applied to the General Education and Training Phase (Grade R – Grade 9) since it was gazetted in 1998. (Kika & Kotze, 2019, p. 2)Further development of this policy includes that in 2019, Minister for Basic Education Motshekga proposed, in her basic education budget vote speech for the 2018/19 financial year, that grade R and 3 learners be pushed through primary school without repeating any grade. This led to a lot of discussions and criticism on news media, particularly from teachers, e.g 
This kind of progression policy is not unique to South Africa. Although Mainardes’s (1999) review of grade retention policy is for Brazil, it also provides a good overview of how this has evolved historically and in different countries. Valbuena et al (2021) similarly provide an overview of how grade retention policy looks like in different countries if you are interested, in addition to summarising empirical findings of grade retention policies’ academic impact.
What is also interesting about progression policies is that although findings on impact as well as policy in different countries have largely converged: grade retention produces more or overall negative effects; most countries now restrict grade retention and practice automatic promotion instead, the topic is interesting in many ways:There are different angles when one looks at grade retention: besides  academic/pedagogical (do retention or its alternative produce a better academic result, lesser failure or dropout), one can also look through economic perspective (grade repetition is expensive for both the state and families concerned); psychological (stigma or emotional harm for the students hold back); social (retention tends to affect children/schools with a lower social economic status disproportionally; enduring effects on job opportunities and income);There is a clear disjunction between stakeholders’ (especially teachers, sometimes also parents) view and what academic impact evidence point to. Valbuena et al’s (2021) review focuses on academic performance results but mentions little, if any, on stakeholders’ attitudes or reception of academic impact evidence. However, teachers’ views (and resistance) are important as they are the ones expected to implement the policy and provide a remedy for struggling but promoted students. If teachers do not agree with the rationale for automatic promotion or they believe retention is an effective remedial strategy for struggling students, then the automatic promotion policy is unlikely to be implemented well. Teachers’ resistance might even lead to passive-aggressive responses where they “developed strategies not to promote students while at the same time reporting that they were not officially repeating” (Shiefelbein & Wolff, 1992, p. 19, 20).
Potential contradiction within the scope of evidence.

First, it is intuitive that if students struggle with certain content, then they should be held back, give additional help to grasp it. Teachers’ resistance to automatic progression is also related to this (does this count as evidence?) The theory of mastery learning (Block & Burns, 1976) also points to the importance of mastering something before moving onto the next level. In addition, there are also studies that find advantages of retention. The example Mainardes (1999, p.7) mentions in repetition in elite schools also suggests that retention can be associated with higher standards and achievement. In addition, evidence is also not clear whether someone might benefit from repetition (and if so, who and under what conditions), why they benefit while others don’t. There are also methodological issues. For example who is the best comparison group (counterfactual); does the policy work in all phases of schooling differently; longer-term impact vs short term impact; are target participants for the policy and research the same etc.What exactly is the problem? How the problem is framed (eg is it only about correcting academic deficiency? How best to address the problem? The intention of the solutions (eg to reduce the number of over-age or increase overall academic performance or system efficiency); availability of variable alternatives (if grade retention doesn’t work, what does?)Evidence of policy borrowing, but the potential difference between context, particularly regarding the means of providing additional resources to help promote struggling students.To complete this assignment, you need to find this particular policy (using the generic skill of literature/document search that we discussed in the collaboration session or the information consultation), recent revision proposal, as well as any scholarly or other discussions on the policy and recent proposal. Use the questions above for your analysis in terms of the evidence. In addition, you should also consider the following for this assignment:Include a summary of the policy, eg its title, a brief background of how it came into being in South Africa, eg anything that happened at the time that made this policy necessary? Why this policy is prioritised at this time? Any backstories?Any social and political or another context within which this policy operates? e.g does the policy show familiarity with applicable national legislation or policies (such as the Constitution, SASA etc)? Are values invoked? If so, what kind of values? How do any of these values appeal to any stakeholders’ sense of how things should be or their interests?How are problems and solutions framed and presented in the policy?A summary of the evidence you find. What evidence did you look for? Are there any gaps in terms of the evidence itself? Any signs of selective sampling of evidence (symbolic use of evidence)? What kind of evidence is invoked in the policy? What evidence is not used/invoked in the policy? Is there any particular pattern in terms of the evidence ignored/downplayed? Any other limitation of evidence? (Eg is the voice/concerns of particular groups systematically ignored/downplayed in the evidence?)For stakeholder analysis, eg who are the stakeholders involved in the policy formulation and implementation? What are their roles? How are the power dynamics played out? (using any of the stakeholder analysis frameworks you choose) Does the policy appear to appeal to something the implementers or those affected by it might worry about or aspire?
 

    

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