South Africa participated in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in 1995 and again in 1999 (TIMSS-Repeat) and in both studies the performance was extremely low compared to the other countries in the studies. In both studies more than 70% of the pupils wrote the achievement tests in their second or third language. A national option, an English test, was included together with the TIMSS-R mathematics and science tests in an attempt to ascertain the level of the pupils' language proficiency. Furthermore, additional questions pertaining to the pupils and their teachers' exposure and usage of English both within and outside of school were also included in the background questionnaire.In this research project that included more than 8 000 pupils in 200 schools, all the items pertaining to English proficiency and language usage and their relationship to mathematics achievement were explored. Partial Least Square analysis was used to explore the relative contribution of these factors to pupils' achievement together with other background variables from the student, teacher and principal questionnaires, resulting in the presentation of a schoollevel, a classroom-level model, a student-level model and a combined class and school-level model. Multi-level analysis was employed whereby a 2-level model (school and class-level and the student-level) was analysed in order to investigate the main factors explaining achievement of South African pupils in mathematics.The study revealed that the pupils' proficiency of English was a strong predictor of their success in mathematics. A number of other background variables on student and class-level were found to be significant. However, home language and class size were amongst those that were not found to have significant effect on achievement, whilst the effect of socio-economic status had a lesser effect once certain class-level factors were taken into consideration.

South Africa's rich multicultural society is reflected by 11 official languages. The

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One of South Africa's identified priorities is the implementation of ICT in education. To this end a phased implementation plan was initiated in 2004 for ICT to be implemented into schools across the country over eight years. During this time South Africa also participated in three international studies undertaken by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) focusing on ICT in Education. Each of these permitted the country to benchmark its progress in terms of other countries and their implementation of ICT in education. The latest study, SITES 2006 provides a useful set of indicators against which South Africa can evaluate its progress with regard to its implementation of ICT. This paper seeks to evaluate South Africa's readiness to integrate ICT into mathematics and science classrooms. This was done using a number of indicators of "sustainable change" derived from SITES 2006 and then comparing these to countries such as Chile, Thailand and Norway, the former two with similar context and conditions and the latter with contrasting conditions. The findings reveal that whilst South Africa has made some progress since 1998 in terms of the implementation of ICT in education, that the majority of schools are still in their infancy regarding the acquisition of ICT and most of those who have access are still in the process of trying to integrate the ICT into their teaching and learning. It would appear that more fundamental needs in South Africa's education system have dominated its priorities.

Incoming chemistry students at tertiary institutions have a variety of academic backgrounds that influence their prospects of success at first-year level. The proficiencies of incoming students are currently changing due to the introduction of outcomes-based education and new syllabi for physical science in secondary schools. In order to ensure a smooth transition from secondary to tertiary education, university lecturers should be well informed about the content knowledge, conceptual understanding and skills development of prospective first-year students. This study evaluates the proficiencies of Grade 12 learners in physical science in terms of a number of clearly identified problem areas: conceptual understanding, logical scientific reasoning, basic mathematical ability, knowledge of subject content and scientific process skills. A test instrument was developed that consisted mainly of conceptual questions rather than recall or algorithmic items. Paired questions (two-tier methodology) and pictorial representations were used extensively. A follow-up question about certainty of response was included for all fixed-response items in order to evaluate the influence of guessing on response distributions. The test instrument was administered at the end of the third term to Grade 12 learners taking Physical science at three schools in privileged environments (1 English and 2 Afrikaans medium) and four township schools, and to all University of Pretoria Foundation Year (UPFY) students.Analysis of results highlighted the generally poor performance of students from township schools and the significant improvement in performance after one year of intensive instruction of UPFY students, who generally came from similar or more impoverished backgrounds. The poor performance for all cohorts on basic concepts, such as the mole concept, stoichiometry and the limiting reagent, as well as on several special topics, indicates that students lack a sound basis for tertiary chemistry. Of real concern is the evidence of over-confidence obtained from the certainty of response analyses. This result indicates that respondents failed to judge the complexity and level of difficulty of questions accurately. Learners/students from all groups displayed weak understanding of events at molecular level. In order to address this situation, lecturers at tertiary level will have to actively promote conceptual understanding of all basic concepts in chemistry and resist the temptation to teach and assess mainly procedural fluency. Analysis of certainty of response data showed that the guess factor was less serious a complication than anticipated.