Do Grade 1s face a bleak future when schools reopen?

With just a week to go until schools reopen, the future looks bleak for over 800 000 pupils who will start Grade 1, as the education system has consistently led to at least 400 000 dropping out before matric.

Data from the education department revealed that 752 000 out of 1.1 million pupils who were in Grade 1 in 2011, enrolled for the Grade 12 exams in 2022. This means more than 425 000 pupils did not sit down for the matric exams at the end of last year.

Education crisis

According to the department of basic education, about 460 000 students who started Grade 1 in 2012, did not sit to write their matric National Senior Certificate exams.

Build One South Africa leader Mmusi Maimane said the country has a crisis in education, “the government has failed our children, we have poor pass rates, 40% will drop out before matric”.

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Maimane has always been vocal about the education system and said “we need to reform it, starting with increasing the pass mark from 30% to minimum 50%”.

“Ensure we build infrastructure and technology in schools, better fund early childhood development so our children have the best starts and, lastly, introduce a voucher programme so we can improve township schools to be comparable and competitive with private schools,” he said.

“It is crucial that we this year elect a government that will focus on youth and prioritise education.”

Trends

Education expert Khumo Rafedile said despite the numbers not yet released, “the trends are not likely to change.”

“The same fate that was dealt for the previous cohort is likely to continue and give us the same consequences – if not more – especially looking at the state of the country.” Rafedile said SA economically went through a “bad spell” and child-headed homes were the hardest hit.

“You can imagine how many children had to drop out and find jobs. We can’t always have the same input and expect different results,” she added.

Dropouts

During the matric results announcement last year, the education department’s director-general, Hubert Mathanzima Mweli, said a large number of students drop out in Grade 9 and 10 to earn a living, adding the public education was not a well-oiled machine.

“More often than not, people will say, your input does not equal your output,” said Mweli. This, however, was not a new trend. Even before Covid, more than 1 002 500 pupils registered for Grade 1 in 2007 – and only 512 700, or 51%, wrote matric examinations in 2018. Only 400 761 – about 40% – passed matric, while 172 000, or 17%, obtained bachelor passes.

The Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) in a series of five reports on the state of SA’s education system, painted a picture of a crisis in schools.

The Silent Crisis  

The independent policy and research organisation said underachievement in learning outcomes by pupils, poor teacher training and support and rampant corruption were some of the reasons behind the ailing education system.

In the series of reports titled The Silent Crisis: Time to Fix South Africa’s Schools, the CDE said it had done a comprehensive analysis of what is crippling the education system and what needs to be done to fix it.

Executive director Ann Bernstein said there should be a change in the political leadership at the helm of basic education to improve SA’s performance in mathematics, science and reading.

“The president speaks of a ‘silent revolution,’ while the minister talks of a ‘system on the rise.’ The truth is that we face a silent crisis in our schools. South Africa has one of the worst performing education systems in the world,” Bernstein said.

In its findings, CDE said in 2021, after a year of school, more than 50% of Grade 1 pupils did not know all the letters in the alphabet.

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