Abstract
Afterschool programmes (ASPs) have long been associated with good academic performance. However, there is limited understanding of this correlation between academic performance and ASPs, resulting in multiple designs of ASPs across the globe. This relationship lacks rigorous empirical evidence to understand how ASPs contribute to improved academic performance, especially in the global south. This is despite education outcomes being persistently poor in some parts of the global south, especially in South Africa. Understanding the association between ASPs and education in the South African context is vital for designing programmes that effectively improve the academic achievements of children and young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. This study presumed that ASPs improve academic outcomes indirectly, potentially through the pathway of promoting resilience amongst young people growing up in impoverished contexts. Therefore, this study’s main objective is to utilise a resilience framework to explore the assets and resources that enable young people who attend the Afrika Tikkun Afterschool Programme (AT-ASP) to achieve better school outcomes than their school peers and the national average, despite the risk of poverty. The study followed a transformative research design, eliciting the contextual expertise of a group of young people in designing research tools and validating findings. Data was drawn from Afrika Tikkun’s secondary data on enrolment, attendance, and examination results, all statistically correlated with data from a resilience survey. Additional qualitative data from interviews added depth to the quantitative findings. Although there was no statistical correlation between the academic results of the young people from the AT-ASP and their participation in the programme, data showed that the afterschool programme’s non-academic activities and family dynamics significantly influenced academic results. Intercepting this relationship between the afterschool programme and academic results and resilience measurements did not reveal direct relationships. However, various relationships revealed in this study demonstrate how the afterschool programme promotes resilience in a way that positions it as a vehicle for social justice.