Dr Gabrielle Wills is a senior researcher at Research on Socio-Economic Policy and senior lecturer in the Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Over the past decade, her academic career has focused on applied research in education economics and education policy, with particular emphasis on learning outcomes (particularly foundational literacy in African languages), educational inequality, and education system performance in South Africa. Her work is oriented toward producing policy-relevant evidence on education systems functioning with research interests spanning early childhood development, basic education, and post-schooling. She has explored how socioeconomic disadvantage, system-shocks, gender dynamics, school leadership and management, governance and educator labour markets shape learner performance. Over the past decade she has led various education research projects. She was the principal investigator of the “COVID-Generation” project (2021-2025) documenting the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the educational outcomes and trajectories of South African youth. This followed her work in 2020/21 as a team lead for the National Income Dynamics Study – Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Study (NIDS-CRAM) which aimed to provide reliable socio-economic related statistics to support policy-making in South Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic. She provides ongoing leadership in the Ilifa Labantwana-Resep-DataDrive2030 ECD Working Paper Series to accelerate knowledge and policy-evidence on early childhood development to support improved planning and support in this sector. She was co-investigator and project lead for an ESRC/DFID funded study titled “Reading and socio-emotional skills in challenging school contexts: Evidence from South African primary schools”, following her role as project coordinator and senior researcher for the ESRC/DFID project (ES/N01023X/1) titled “Succeeding Against the Odds: Understanding resilience and exceptionalism in high-functioning township and rural primary schools in South Africa”. Working with a team of researchers including colleagues in the South African Department of Basic Education, she was involved in producing the first available early grade reading benchmarks in African languages in South Africa. Gabrielle holds a PhD in economics from Stellenbosch University (2016) and Masters of Commerce in Economics (summa cum laude) from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (2008).