Children in South Africa’s poorest schools are performing the worst and it is the children of the poor whom society is failing the most. This is according to the head of Wits University’s school of education, Professor Mary Metcalfe.
Metcalfe was commenting on a statement by Education Minister Naledi Pandor that a “significant” number of children drop out of school after grade nine. Pandor said that between 11% and 15% of children left school each year after grade nine and that drop-out rates were lower in the Indian and white communities than in the African and coloured groups. Reasons for the drop outs had not been established owing to the short time span of a study probing the matter.
Metcalfe said that researchers have long been indicating that children were disappearing from the school system but the education department kept denying this. She commended Pandor for organising a task team to undertake this study and for acknowledging there is a problem.
She stressed that patterns of school performance are significantly influenced by South Africa’s socio-economic context, and race and class coincide. “We perpetuate historic inequalities in our schools.”
She explained that when schools were managed and differently resourced by education departments organised on racial divisions, the matric exam was separate but never equal for children of different races.
“For some the annual headlines trumpeted a 98% pass rate and for others the pass rate was never above 50%. We did not change these patterns with a single education system, nor by introducing a single matric exam.”
She said that in 2003, almost one in 10 of the white cohort achieved an A aggregate for matric, compared with just more than one in 1 000 of the black cohort (and half of these were attending suburban schools).
Metcalfe said that while “communities must tell us why children are leaving school and this should feed into public debate”, children of the poor carry the worst burden of poverty. This includes issues around the effect of HIV/Aids, nutrition, the hidden costs of attending school and family illiteracy.
There may also be a group that is less inclined to see the value of education as they see high levels of unemployment. “This group may be under pressure to contribute to family income. They might believe it is better to work on a farm or in a mine as education brings no promise of anything better and so the cycle of poverty does not change.” All these factors could contribute to children dropping out of school.
Said Metcalfe: “I really believe that in schools serving the poorest quintile there needs to be many more social workers and psychologists and the schools should be smaller in size,” as teachers here are preoccupied with social fabric issues.
She said that in a child’s primary school years “you learn that you can produce something or you can master something. The most important thing is learning that you’re capable. You need to provide education that is supportive.”
Although Metcalfe supports the progressive extension of the child support grant (now R600 a month) to poor children up to the age of 18 as a means of keeping children in school, she called for a reopening of the debate for a basic income grant for South Africans.
The initial idea was mooted just after 2000 by the Basic Income Grant Coalition (comprising Cosatu, the Black Sash and the South African Council of Churches). The coalition called for the introduction of a basic income grant as part of a comprehensive package aimed at stamping out extreme poverty.
There was a proposal that the grant should be paid to every person legally resident in South Africa, regardless of age or income, as a means of reducing poverty and promoting human development. Funds would be recovered from wealthier people through the tax system. The idea was shot down by government.