Meet The Team

Heleen is a postdoctoral fellow at Research on Socio-Economic Policy (Resep). Her doctoral thesis looked at the role of non-cognitive skills in education. She is currently continuing this work, with particular interest in the formation of children’s skills in early childhood.

Nic Spaull is an Associate Professor of Economics at Stellenbosch University. His research focuses on early grade reading and mathematics as well as education policy. He advises a number of policymakers and philanthropies on education in South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Cally Ardington is a Professor in theSouthern African Labour and Development Research Unit(SALDRU).She completed her PhD in Economics at the University of Cape Town in 2009.Herresearch interests lie in development and labour economics with a focus on education and health.She has extensive experience in the design, management and micro-econometric analysis of socialsurveys and quantitative (experimental and quasi-experimental design) impact evaluations. Herrecent work has centered around emergent and early literacy and numeracy, social-emotional skillsand executive functioning amongst kindergarten and primary school children. She is currently thePrincipal Investigator ona series of evaluations of a program in teaching reading and mathematics inAfrican Languages in South Africa, and a pre-service learner-centered teaching program in Ghana.

Peter Courtney is a researcher and doctoral candidate at Research on Socio-Economic Policy (Resep). His work focuses on spatial econometrics in South Africa. 

Poppie Ntaka is a PhD (Economics) candidate at the University of Stellenbosch. She has research experience in the public finance environment, where she has worked on various projects that have focused on public education, municipal debt and other intergovernmental fiscal relations issues.