Janeli Kotzé is currently Deputy Director in the Research Coordination, Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate at the Department of Basic Education where her main research focus is on Early Childhood Development and Early Grade Reading. She completed her PhD in Economics at the University of Stellenbosch, focussing on understanding the complexities of the South African education crisis and on the improvement of national policy around this issue. Prior to working at the Department of Basic Education, she was involved in a number of local and international research projects relating to the evaluation of national policy, cross-national comparisons of educational achievement, learning trajectories of children over time and the interaction between low quality schooling and child poverty.