No progress in addressing school dropouts, says report

South Africa still has a long way to go in the fight against school dropout, a new report, School Dropout: Advocacy to Action, reveals.

The report launched by Zero Dropout Campaign yesterday highlighted pregnancy, drug abuse, financial struggles, peer pressure and pupils not coping academically remained among the leading reasons for school dropout rates.

According to Merle Mansfield, programme director for Zero Dropout Campaign, the 2024 report conducted across the country showed the overall dropout rate of 33% by respondents was not far from the 40% estimated in the basic education system.

Overall 33% dropout rate

“We had anticipated that in line with General Household Survey, more people would give financial reasons as to why they think pupils drop out and surprisingly it didn’t feature prominently. It seems we are not necessarily winning the fight against dropouts. Part of this involves shifting perceptions around dropout,” she said.

“In all clusters, there was an acceptance that not all children will finish school, normalising the phenomenon of dropouts. Winning the battle starts with changing this perception and exploring options for pupils who aren’t academically inclined while creating pathways for them,” she said.

Mansfield said despite improvements in the education sector and South Africa’s large investment in basic education, an estimated four in 10 pupils who enrol in Grade 1 still exit the schooling system before finishing matric.

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“The throughput rate, measuring how quickly pupils progress from Grade 10 to Grade 12, shows pupils taking longer than the two expected years. Being overage for a grade increases the dropout risk.

“Repeating grades without support demoralises pupils, which is common in schools. Additionally, some schools engage in gatekeeping at Grade 10, holding back pupils unlikely to pass their matric exams to maintain high pass rates. This unintentionally pushes pupils out of the system.”

She added that although legislative and policies such as the Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela Act and general education certificate (GEC), were steps towards minimising school pupil dropouts, this could only be accomplished if there is political will to implement them.

Bela Act and GEC steps towards minimising dropouts

“Bela is the first policy to address dropouts by tracking attendance.

“While encouraging, it’s limited as it doesn’t address dropouts comprehensively beyond tracking attendance.

“The second policy is the GEC, currently piloted by the department of basic education (DBE). It’s designed to create exit pathways for pupils after Grade 9.

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“However, we haven’t seen the results of this pilot and we lack the infrastructure to scale it effectively. Even if pupils exit with a Grade 9 certificate, there’s little clarity on what they can do with it.”

She said although the South African Schools Administration and Management System was adopted by the DBE in 2007 and is operating in 85% of South African schools, the country still lacked early warning systems to prevent dropouts.

“We need more detailed and regular data. I believe that better school dropout tracking systems can tell us a much bigger story about the reasons for pupils dropping out of school.

‘Need to understand lived realities’

“We need to understand their lived realities, find patterns across schools and districts, use the data to develop targeted programmes and interventions and start predicting who is at risk of dropping out of school,” the Zero Dropout report said.

It also highlighted insufficient psychosocial support, adding teachers simply cannot attend to the needs of all their pupils because of their heavy workloads and the realities of the schooling system.

“There are 23 000 pupils for every one school social worker. Meanwhile, 9 000 social workers are unemployed in South Africa (2022 statistics).

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“Despite the DBE’s implementation of pupil support agents, there is a chronic backlog in responding to referral cases, taking from one week to three months.”