A new look at Department of Education statistics suggests that from 1995 to 2001 a startling 40% of primary school children dropped out of school.
The findings, by the University of Cape Town’s Professor Crain Soudien, are contained in a 10-year review of schooling conducted by the Centre for Education Policy Development (CEPD) for the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu).
Sadtu commissioned the review to help it identify and develop responses to the education system’s “inability to deliver high-quality and equitable education for all South Africa’s children”. The 200-page document suggests it is in “the key areas of learner access, school funding, teacher morale and, most urgently, quality education that difficulties are being experienced”.
Soudien writes that in 1995 1 666 980 pupils enrolled in Grade 1. But by 2001 only 932 151 had made it to Grade 7, “leaving 734 829 learners unaccounted for”. “We do not know for sure what happened to them,” he told the Mail & Guardian, “but with well over 90% of primary school children being passed, it’s likely that they left the school system.”
Soudien said that because official data was unreliable it was impossible to say whether the school system’s retention of pupils had improved or worsened since the years he examined. He had chosen the 1995 to 2001 period because it provided the best available data.
Jonathan Jansen, dean of education at the University of Pretoria, remarked that there were no “fine-tuned studies of drop-out rates. Which there should be — it’s a huge issue.”
Speculating on the possible reasons for drop-outs, he said: “On the one hand you insist people go to school, but then don’t make it worth their while to be there because the quality is so poor.”
Parents also pulled their children out because of costs, while the rise in Aids orphans must be playing a part, he said.
The review itself points to “external social factors, namely poverty, unemployment, the HIV/Aids pandemic and rurality, which result in a diverse group of learners with diverse learning needs in the system. At present the education system seems out of sync with the needs of these learners.”
Released to Sadtu’s membership for comment this week at the union’s national general council, the review centrally argues that, despite massive and progressive policy strides over the past 10 years, the schooling system continues to deepen socio-economic divisions.
Thulas Nxesi, the union’s general secretary, said there were indications that “the education system, despite significant efforts on the part of the state after 1994, is not achieving its objectives in key areas of delivery that bear on the union’s membership and the public that this membership serves”.
The review argues that “education is the key site upon which social bifurcation and fragmentation is playing itself out”. Poor and predominantly black learners experience discrimination and disadvantage within the education system, and “despite the best intentions in [the government] policy to address the needs of learners from poor and disadvantaged communities … in fact the policy remains out of reach of these communities”.
Soudien’s chapter also presents new research on achievement rates in numeracy and literacy in the Western Cape demonstrating “the extent to which disparities in quality in the educational system reflect race and class fractures in the broader society”. The best- performing learners were the most well-off. “At every level of the performance spectrum poverty correlates strongly with attainment,” Soudien concludes.
He adds that “redistributive funding may be insufficient or … conversely there are inefficiencies within poor schools that prevent the take-up of funds”.