PAN: Children

Welcome to the PAN:Children Portal. PAN:Children is an online knowledge-hub complemented by dialogue and capacity building activities. We seek to provide timely and up-to-date information on child rights and equity. A partnership between the HSRC and UNICEF, this platform aims to provide a consolidated digital repository on the situation of children in South Africa. Please see the “About Us” page for further information.

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Latest publications

Child mortality: Addressing the leading causes of child mortality through life-saving commodities
Document(s): World Vision South Africa Child Health Now policy brief for the World Health Assembly.pdf

This policy brief from World Vision provides insight on child mortality ahead of the World health Assembly. There is a brief discussion of the major causes of newborn and child death as well new global initiatives to end preventable child death. In addition, the role of government in securing life saving commodities of chidren under five is addressed and recommendations are provided.

Early Childhood Development: Topical Guide
Document(s): ECD.pdf

One in a series of topical guides developed for PAN:Children that provides key information on the current state of affairs in South Africa related to the topic and highlight practical guidance, lessons learned and case studies (both national and international) that will be helpful in policy development dialogue and knowledge sharing.

Improving teaching and learning through the South African Annual National Assessment: Challenges, possibilities and solutions

Link: Improving teaching and learning

This policy brief argues for a policy direction to develop a culture of formative assessment through what is termed ANA Professional Development (ANA_PD) programmes.

Promoting young fathers’ positive involvement in their children’s lives
Link: Promoting young fathers’ positive involvement in their children’s lives

Many young fathers want to be active parents and have a strong sense of responsibility towards their children. They are, however, confronted with numerous barriers. This policy brief makes recommendations for policies and programmes to increase young fathers’ chances of being positive, involved parents.

Fast-tracking value-added analysis to ensure fairer assessment: A South African perspective
Link: Fast-tracking value-added analysis to ensure fairer assessment:

South Africa has a high enrolment rate and a high investment rate in education (about 5 per cent of GDP), but education is still of unsatisfactory quality. This policy brief proposes wider usage of value-added assessment (VAA) and analysis (which provides a more reliable estimate of the value added – the extent to which schools make a difference in their learners’ achievement levels) in policy decision-making.

Young lives
Link: Young lives

Young Lives is an international study of childhood poverty, involving 12,000 children in fourcountries over 15 years. It is led by a team in the Department of International Development at the University of Oxford in association with research and policy partners in the four study countries: Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam. Through researching different aspects of children's lives it seeks to improve policies and programmes for children and produces a range of publications to present the Young Lives data and analysis and to document methodology.  

Children's chances: How children can move from surviving to thriving
Link: Changing children's chances

Online data from a report which systematically presents comparative data on laws and public policies in 191 countries covering areas essential to children's healthy development. Changing children's chances examines policy data and their impact in the areas of poverty, discrimination, education, health, child labour, child marriage, and parental care. The report provides a global picture of the policy tools governments can use to make a difference to children's opportunities in life. The website summarizes key original findings from databases on current laws and policies in UN member states.

A guide for involving young people in monitoring & evaluating child protection systems
Link: A guide for involving young people in monitoring & evaluating child protection systems

This Guide is designed to be used by protection organisations, facilitators, local governments, young people, communities, and other child protection actors to promote and foster strong accountability to children, youth and their communities in the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) process with respect to protection for young people.

The right of the child to be heard
Link: The right of the child to be heard

This paper addresses the right of children to be heard in any judicial or administrative proceeding affecting them. It introduces the subject based on examples from the laws and practices of 52 countries around the world. This paper is addressed primarily to child rights advocates, researchers, legal practitioners and other professionals working in the area of children and the law. Further research is needed to document good practices and to complement this introductory, global overview with studies focusing in more detail on different regions or legal traditions and specific types of proceedings.

Monitoring and evaluation with children
Link: Monitoring and evaluating with children

This guide was designed to help those monitoring and evaluating projects with children. It does not aim to discuss how to do evaluation but shows how to involve children in the process of evaluation and what needs to change or be taken into account when working with them. It grew out of a participatory evaluation of the Girls First Clubs carried out in Togo, in March 2005, where the children from the clubs made a valuable contribution to the evaluation process.