Meet The Team

Heleen is a senior researcher at Research on Socio-Economic Policy (RESEP), Stellenbosch University. Her research centers around the role of socio-emotional skills in education, with particular interest in the formation of children’s skills in early childhood. 

Cally Ardington is a Professor in the Southern African Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU), University of Cape Town. Her research interests lie in development and labour economics with a focus on education and health. Her recent work has centered around emergent and early literacy and numeracy, social-emotional skills and executive functioning amongst pre-primary and primary school children.

Poppie Ntaka is a PhD (Economics) candidate at the Stellenbosch University. 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.

Jess is a researcher at Research on Socio-Economic Policy (RESEP), Stellenbosch University and Firdale Consulting. She has experience in early grade reading and maths, early childhood development (ECD), and secondary education. Her work includes large-scale surveys, RCTs, and mixed-methods research on education and youth development in South Africa and beyond.