South Africa’s school dropout rate was ”exceptionally high”, the Democratic Alliance said on Sunday.
”According to the United Nations Human Development Programme (UNHDP), the proportion of grade one students reaching grade five declined from 75% in 1990/91 to 65% in 2001/02,” DA MP Helen Zille said in a statement on Sunday.
The government should focus its attention on getting the education funding model right, as this would address the extent to which poverty was keeping children out of school.
The UNHDP attributed South Africa’s slide of 35 places on its development index since 1994, to the primary school dropout rate, said Zille.
The country was currently ranked 120 out of 177 countries, below Vanuatu and Egypt, in the medium level of development category.
According to the UNHDP indicators, the government’s spending on pre-primary and primary education — as a percentage of spending on all levels of education — dropped from 75,6% in 1990 to 47,8% for 2000-2.
Spending on tertiary education decreased from 21,5% to 14,6% over the same period.
A total of 31,3% of all money the government spent on education went to secondary schools for the 2000-2 period.
Zille added that several provinces did not have the capacity to identify ”ghost teachers” on the payroll, issue a vacancy list, or run a school feeding scheme. – Sapa