WITH a week to go before the matric class of 2019 receive their results, the spotlight has turned to the high percentage of high school dropouts.
In 2007, 92 818 pupils were enrolled into Grade 1 at public schools in the Western Cape. Twelve years later, only 53 395 full-time candidates were registered for the 2019 matric exams.
This means that more than 39 000 pupils failed to progress to Grade 12 in the allocated time.
Western Cape Education Department spokesperson Millicent Merton said a number of factors may have contributed to this staggering figure.
“Learners who were enrolled in Western Cape schools might have moved to other provinces during the course of their schooling careers and continued their schooling in other provinces. Other reasons might include transfer to a TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training) college, or to a private school,” Merton said.
She said there were multiple reasons for pupils "dropping out" of the system, and the department worked hard to retain as many pupils as possible.
“The Western Cape’s retention rate from Grades 10 to 12 is the highest in the country, at around 63%,” she said.
Director of child rights organisation Molo Songololo, Patric Solomons, disagreed with
Merton’s assessment.
He said the high number of pupils who did not complete their schooling was a reflection of the poor quality of education.
The schooling system was unable to retain pupils due to a lack of effective programmes.
"It is not about the migration to TVET colleges; only a small number of those pupils fall into that category.
"The biggest crisis we have in education at the moment is that you have about 60% of children who don’t finish their schooling. That leaves them unemployable,” he said.
Infrastructure in township schools was particularly problematic: "A problem of management, poor infrastructure, the lowest quality of teachers, overcrowding and the social challenges that those children have to live and learn under
exacerbate the problem.”
A study by the University of Pretoria showed that in 2016, 78% of the country’s Grade 4 pupils were not able to reach the lowest benchmark, compared to 4%
internationally.
This meant 78% of pupils in South Africa could not read for meaning, or with an
understanding.
“We need to make sure that children at least finish matric. If they do that, it means they have a better chance of entering tertiary education and ultimately they have a better chance of making a success of themselves.
"We still have children who go to high school who don’t have proper language skills in terms of reading and writing. They don’t have proper life skills, that’s the fundamental problem,” Solomons said.