Minister of Education Naledi Pandor on Tuesday rejected a report by the Beeld newspaper on the dropout rate in South African schools.
The newspaper reported that only 21,9% of pupils who had been in grade one in 1994 wrote matric last year.
Pandor said the report was a misreading of her response to parliamentary question 691.
”The dropout rate refers to the proportion of learners who leave school without completing a given grade in a given school year,” she said in a statement.
”Hence, the dropout rate is grade-specific and is not measured across a range of grades.
”The question presumes that a subtraction of enrolment figures between grades provides a measure of the dropout rate between grade one and 12.”
She said this assumption did not take into account factors such as pupils repeating grades, pupils who left school to attend FET (further education and training) colleges or ABET (adult basic education and training) institutions and those who delay leaving secondary school for economic reasons.
”Moreover, when attempting to do a cohort comparison it needs to be born in mind that in the early 1990s there was a high under-age enrolment rate and repetition rate in grade one,” she said. — Sapa