Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) General Household Survey showed around 51% of learners who are enrolled in Grade 1 will complete Grade 12 and obtain a National Senior Certificate. It is further estimated that 250,000 learners drop out of school every year.
The Zero Dropout Campaign says learners do not simply drop out because they are lazy or do not care about their education. They believe several factors lead to learners dropping out of school which are often beyond their control.
Education Expert Mary Metcalf says learners leave school when they begin to lose hope and don't see the value of attending school. This is compounded when learners are not coping with the learning expectations.
Metcalf added, “The school-based factors that give rise to capable young people not succeeding in school start with the early Foundation Phase period. In the first three years of schooling, we expect and hope that learners would be able to master reading in their home language and basic numeracy arithmetic.”
Social worker Jabulile Mazibuko believes that all stakeholders including the government must invest in programmes that help learners stay in school.
This is because prevention is better than cure and assisting a child before they drop out is easier than assisting a child who already left school, as children who drop out of school often become more vulnerable.
Mazibuko said, “Invest in programs that are helping children to remain in school because sometimes assisting a child that is at a point of dropping out is better than a child who has already dropped out because this child also becomes part of the system [and] becomes more vulnerable.”
Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga said their department had conducted one five years ago, where it had cited poverty, a lack of supervision and suicide, as among the varying reasons for the high drop-out rate.
Motshekga says when the complexity of the matter is considered, broader society should assist in decreasing the severity of the problem, instead of laying the blame solely at the feet of the education department.
