Durban - Half of the 1.1 million pupils who were in Grade 10 in 2012 never made it to matric this year. This staggering statistic reflecting South Africa’s “lost children” is being blamed on poverty, learning deficits and pressure from schools bent on achieving high pass rates.
Newly released figures from the Basic Education Department also reveal that of the 264 000 KwaZulu-Natal pupils enrolled in Grade 10 in 2012, only 154 000 made it to matric, and 148 000 were eligible to sit the final exams as full time pupils.
Educationists argue that the “dangerous” drop-out figures mean these pupils are swelling the ranks of the unemployed, and make for a skewed national matric pass rate.
Various reports produced by the department since 2007, point to the high rate of grade repetition to explain the low number of pupils writing matric.
Pupils were spending a few years repeating grades 10 and 11 before permanently leaving school.
There were schools which held back Grade 11s at risk of failing matric, while many pupils did not believe that they were able to pass.
These pupils had accumulated learning deficits over the course of their primary school years, where they had failed to master the basics, but were pushed through.
Department spokesman Elijah Mhlanga said the department was “very worried” and doing everything possible to ensure pupils stayed in school.
“There are various reasons for drop-out. These include poverty, imprisonment, pregnancy, some learners diverting to FET colleges and learners finding jobs to support child-headed families. It is also possible that some do not cope with the demands of the curriculum and feel they do not stand a chance to pass,” Mhlanga said.
Ways in which the department was trying to keep children in school included:
* The National School Nutrition Programme, which provides a hot meal to more than nine million pupils.
* No-fee schools.
* Increasing access to Grade R, as studies indicated that a child who attended pre-primary programmes was likely to remain in the education system.
* Providing free textbooks.
The department had also taken to monitoring the teaching of the curriculum as part of its pupil retention strategy. The emphasis was on improving the number of pupil assessment tasks in all grades, giving pupils more written work and instilling a culture of discipline.
A document prepared by the KZN Education Department showed that if KZN’s 2011 matric pass rate was calculated as a percentage of the number of children enrolled in Grade 2 ten years earlier, it would have been 39 percent, and not 68.1 percent.
In 2001, KZN had 213 000 pupils in Grade 2. Ten years later, less than 84 000 had passed matric.
Professor Labby Ramrathan, from the school of education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, agreed pupils dropped out for various reasons, which included believing that education was not going to improve their current circumstances, needing to work full time to support their families, and having to repeat a grade. A drop-out rate of 50 percent was a “dangerous” and “scary” statistic, he said.
Professor Francis Faller, of the school of education at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), said he had heard from some matric pupils that unless they could pass well enough to get into university, it was not worth it.
“The real crisis is in the absence of post-school alternatives. The technical and vocational sector has been ignored until recently. Many pupils would benefit from skills-based training but it appears that the majority of those who drop out are going into unemployment,” Faller said.
Professor Brahm Fleisch, also of the school of education at Wits, said a major reason for pupils dropping out was that they were reaching high school without having mastered the curriculum.
“They don’t just need health or social support, but substantial curriculum support. It is primarily an educational issue. We have Grade 9 pupils who are reading at the level of grade three, four and five. We need to work on improving home language and first additional language in the foundation phase (grades R to three). And we need to work closely with teachers in the intermediate phase (grades four to six) to consolidate and deepen reading and understanding,” Fleisch said.
Out of every 100 pupils who where in Grade 2 in 2003, 51 made it to matric in 2013, 40 passed matric, and just 16 qualified for university study, according to a calculation by Nic Spaull, an education researcher in the economics department at Stellenbosch University.
The Mercury