Chapter 14 The Coloured Progressive Matrices in South Africa

With a view to establishing adequate South African norms for Raven’s Coloured Progressive Matrices, 2,469 children, aged 5 to 12 years and judged to form a representative sample of pupils of that age in the Free State were tested. As was the case in earlier, less broadly based, studies, the overall norms which resulted were somewhat lower than their UK equivalents. However, when the data were broken down by language of the home, it emerged that the norms for the English and Afrikaans speaking group were very similar to the UK norms. Those for the “other languages ” group were higher than norms which have been reported for an Xhosa-medium primary school near Grahamstown. South Africa has eleven offi cial languages and a population of approxi-mately 45 million divided into four main groups. Black people represent a diversity of indigenous groups. White people are mainly descendents of European immigrants. Coloured people are descendents of cross-cultura