Magister Philosophiae - MPhil / The South African schools act, (number 5, 1996), asserts that all learners have a right to access both basic and quality education without discrimination of any sort. Since the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals there has been a drive by the Department of Education to ensure that all learners have access to basic education by 2015. However what remains a challenge after almost 20 years of democracy is the poor quality of education and this is clear from the results of international assessment studies. Results from studies like the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study and Southern and East Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality, show that South African children perform well below international averages. In this study learner Mathematics achievement scores taken from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study 2011 cycle will serve as a proxy for educational quality. Using multilevel analysis the current study aims to use a 2-level Hierarchical Linear Model to firstly; determine the learner and family background factors associated with education quality. Secondly; factors at the school level will be identified and proven to be associated with education quality. Variables selected for the study was based on Creamer’s theory of school effectiveness which looked at school, classroom level inputs as well as learner background variables to explain student level achievement. The results show that at the learner’s level the most significant factors were the age of the leaner, in the sense that grade age appropriate learners obtained higher scores than overage learners. Learner’s perception of mathematics is extremely important and has a positive effect on mathematics performance. In the current study mathematics perception refers to learners valuing and liking mathematics as well learner confidence in learning mathematics. Learners who said they were bullied as school generally scored lower than learners who were not bullied. At the school level the most significant factors were teacher working conditions, teachers’ specialisation in mathematics, school socio-economic status, and general infrastructure. Interesting to note at the school level is when socioeconomic status was included in the model as a single variable the score difference between low socio-economic status and high socio-economic status schools was almost 46 points. However when the factors mentioned above were added to the model the difference in scores dropped by almost half.

To provide quality assurance to various stakeholders, current foreign language program evaluation practices often incorporate learners' satisfaction of their language program experiences. Surprisingly, there is a lack of research investigating the multiple learner variables that potentially influence their satisfaction of the program, including foreign language proficiency, foreign language learning goals, and foreign language program grades. In order to address this issue, a study investigating the influences of various learner factors on program satisfaction was conducted with 440 learners enrolled in a two-year English as a foreign language program at a university in Japan. The results of a recursive path analysis indicated that program satisfaction, a construct comprised of questionnaire items related to the content and learners expectations as well as various aspects of the instructors, was influenced by their level of academic-vocational English language learning goals, grades in the English program courses, and gains in English language proficiency. While initial English proficiency did not have a direct effect on program satisfaction as hypothesized, it did have considerable indirect effects through its influence on other learner variables in the model, particularly the learners' grades. Importantly, further analyses also found significant differences between gender groups regarding the interrelationships of the learner factors to satisfaction, with proficiency gains having considerable effects for the male participants but almost no effect among the female participants. Furthermore, a comparison of the path models for each gender group showed that while the learner variables accounted for 17% of the variance in program satisfaction for the male learners, the same learner variables only accounted for 5% of satisfaction in the model for the female learners. Another important finding was an increase of 30% of variance accounting for program satisfaction between a path analysis that incorporated the learners' gains in English language proficiency based on pre- and post-program TOEFL scores and another path analysis that used the learners' self-perceived improvement in English language skills. Finally, a cross-validation of the path models revealed statistically significant differences on two variables, proficiency gain and English learning goals, between the two cohorts in the study, indicating a limitation in the longitudinal format utilized. / CITE/Language Arts