1. a) The Foundation Phase policy on promotion requirements is stipulated in the National Policy Pertaining to the Programme and Promotion Requirements of the National Curriculum Statement (NCS) and the National Protocol on Assessment (NPA), which state that a learner may only be retained once in the Foundation Phase in order to prevent the learner being retained in this phase for longer than four years.
b) The international literature on this topic demonstrates very little evidence for repetition policies actually benefitting children. At best, these policies appear to have no effect on learner achievement and dropout, despite the immense financial stress they place on the schooling system. However, in many cases they have a negative effect on child outcomes.
Two early meta-analyses (Holmes, 1989; Jimerson 2001) showed strong negative effects of retention policies on academic achievement and socio-emotional adjustment. A recent and more rigorous meta-analysis (Allen 2009), indicated that on average repetition either had a negative effect or a null effect on academic achievement. As such, support for automatic progression within the South African context is being considered as a possible policy position, given that repetition is regarded as being associated with learner dropout and poor academic performance (Branson, Hofmeyr and Lam, 2013; Hartley, 2006). Indeed, many scholars (Jimerson et al., 1997) hold the view that the negative effects of repetition far outweigh automatic promotion. Within this debate, we must also consider issues of efficiency and human rights aspects of over-sized classes, as well as the unaffordability of bringing the learner/educator ratio down substantially via hiring of additional teachers. Many school systems in both developed and developing countries have adopted automatic promotion policies which stipulate that all learners who complete a given school year be promoted to the next grade, regardless of their levels of achievement.2. The Minister will not make a statement. The Department of Basic Education (DBE) is putting plans in place to make the necessary policy amendments which could give effect to automatic progression in the Foundation Phase: