We must do more to keep kids in school

Government has failed to translate educational access into educational success for most pupils in SA, write Merle Mansfield and Daniella Horwitz

When I started high school on the Cape Flats in Cape Town, I was one of about 300 pupils divided into eight different Grade 8 classes.

By the time we wrote matric five years later, there were only 56 pupils left, and we were in a single class.

Nearly all of us passed that year and we celebrated happily – we had made it, and we gave little thought to the fact that four out of five of our fellow Grade 8s had not.

It’s been almost 20 years since I wrote matric, yet the alarming rate at which pupils disappear from the education system persists.

The annual national matric pass rate has improved year on year, with the Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga even joking recently that she was ready to retire after the increase from 78.2% in 2018 to 81.3% last year.

But we must understand that, before the rewrites that are still to happen, 58% of the children who entered Grade 1 in 2008 did not manage to write and pass their matric exam 12 years later.

In essence, we have failed to translate educational access into educational success for most pupils in South Africa.

My memories of high school are rife with the typical barriers that far too many schools and pupils face in the country, including overcrowded classrooms and dual language subject teaching.

I recall community violence leading to early school closures, and constant news of pupils being caught in the crossfire of shoot-outs on their way to or from school.

We had to dodge bullets early one morning en route to write a maths test in Grade 8.

I remember one of my fellow pupils Layla* witnessed a murder one weekend while sitting in the doorway of her home.

She suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, but could only access four free counselling sessions.

She struggled with loud noises and overcrowded spaces, both of which were a daily reality in our school.

She started to smoke dagga to manage her symptoms, and she dropped out of school a year after the murder.

I remember Alex*, whose father took drugs and turned him into a daily punching bag.

He often skipped school when his bruises were visible.

Or Michelle*, who stayed home when her mum got part-time work so she could take care of her grandmother, who had cancer.

READ: Why we need to read aloud to children in their own language

These are just a few examples of the daily realities that pupils must overcome if they are to make it to school, let alone stay in it until matric.

There are many complex and interrelated reasons children drop out of school.

Typically, they are a combination of individual, family, community and school-related factors that build up over time.

Tackling the underlying causes of school drop-out rates – poverty and inequality – will require massive political commitment and policy change, but this will take time.

Fortunately, there are things we can, and should, be doing now to keep pupils in school.

As a start, we need to think differently about the matric pass rate.

We need to shift our focus from viewing passing Grade 12 as the only means to evaluate the success of our education system (and our pupils), and we must concentrate on those who might or do fall through the cracks.

If schools focused less on the matric pass rate and more on helping pupils do well so that they do not drop out, struggling pupils could be supported to catch up to where they need to be and they would have greater odds of making it through school.

The reality is that 78% of Grade 4 pupils cannot read for meaning – in English or their home language.

Left unchecked, learning gaps such as this can become so large that it becomes impossible to catch up.

In the effort to protect their pass rates, however, schools often hold pupils back or, in keeping with government’s grade progression policy, move them up a grade even if they don’t meet the academic standards required to pass.

Our Constitution says every child has the right to an education – getting into school, staying in school and finishing school.

Yet, despite the scores of drop-outs, there is no national task team in place to address this issue.

It is within this gap that the DG Murray Trust’s Zero Drop-out Campaign is working together with nongovernmental organisations in the education sector to halve the number of school drop-outs by 2030.

This demands a coordinated response, beginning with the accurate tracking of pupils’ data across their journey through school.

In particular, tracking each pupil’s ABCs – academic achievement, behaviour and chronic absenteeism – would allow us to effectively monitor signs of disengagement.

Monitored effectively, these indicators serve as an early warning system that help us to understand the risk level of each pupil so we know who requires intervention to prevent them from dropping out before it’s too late.

As we enter a new decade, it’s time to move beyond our obsession with the national pass rate and confront the real elephant in the room – after all, dropping out of school doesn’t affect individual pupils, it threatens our social and economic potential as a country.

As Professor John Volmink says: “Every time a pupil drops out of school, it impacts on the fabric of our society. Yet another citizen will find it more difficult to participate meaningfully in the choices that affect their lives, to be a self-managing person, or to participate fully in the economy … This is not just about supporting pupils to finish school, it is about nation-building. It is about ensuring a just, truly transformed and admirable society.”

*Not their real names

Merle Mansfield is the programme director of the Zero Drop-out Campaign. Daniella Horwitz is a freelance journalist focusing on social development issues

• Visit dgmt.co.za/dropout/ for more about the campaign and its flagship publication, School drop-out. What’s the catch?

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