The mediating effects of post-pandemic health promotion behaviors in the relationship between anxiety and quality of life in young adults in South Korea: a cross-sectional study.

Why do universal education policies so often produce systematically unequal outcomes? In South Africa, part of the answer lies in the framework of the curriculum itself. Curricula are not neutral inventories of knowledge. They are governance structures whose internal hierarchies determine which subjects attract sustained institutional investment, professional infrastructure, and pedagogic attention, and which are quietly left to operate on the margins (; ). The Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) mandates career guidance for all secondary learners through the compulsory subject Life Orientation (LO). In practice, however, a clear compliance gap exists between policy intent and what learners actually receive. This review defines that gap as the systematic divergence between what CAPS mandates for career guidance and the institutional conditions required to deliver it. Learners in well-resourced schools tend to receive sustained, individualized career coaching. Learners in marginalized settings encounter only sporadic information with little follow-through (; ). The variation is not random. It follows the curriculum’s own hierarchy of subjects and their governance status. Despite three decades of post-apartheid reform, the South African school system remains deeply bifurcated. South African public schools are grouped into five quintiles (Q1 to Q5) on the basis of the socio-economic composition of the communities they serve. Schools in Quintiles 1–3 are designated “no-fee” schools and constitute approximately sixty per cent of public schools, serving the majority of learners (; ). Schools in Quintiles 4 and 5 are permitted to charge fees and serve historically more advantaged communities. School quintiles still serve as functional proxies for inherited socio-economic advantage, reflecting allocation patterns whose effects continue to structure provision in the present (; ). The scale of the challenge is significant. In the first quarter of 2025, approximately 46 per cent of South Africans aged 15–34 were unemployed (), and among those aged 15–24 the rate rose to 62 per cent, underscoring the practical stakes of the transition from schooling to work. Within this landscape, LO occupies a precarious position. It is compulsory, yet internally assessed []. It is not externally examined. It is also excluded from the Admission Points Score calculations used by most South African universities (). LO is therefore present in every school timetable but absent from the structures that confer institutional weight on a subject. This configuration produces what can usefully be described as a self-reinforcing cycle of disinvestment. In examination-centered systems, much of the institutional pressure that drives teacher development, subject advisor appointment, and regular inspection is generated by external accountability requirements (; ). Subjects that escape external scrutiny tend, over time, to attract fewer resources and lower professional priority (; ). LO’s structural position therefore directly shapes the unequal distribution of career guidance infrastructure across school quintiles. The mechanism is not malicious; it is governance-driven.