SA’s schooling situation – More negatives than positives?

A very high school drop-out rate is among the concerns for the Institute of Race Relations.

The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has said that education is the greatest obstacle to socio-economic advancement in South Africa.

According to a report released by Fast Facts from the Centre for Risk Analysis, it has been found that there are serious negative features posing a real threat to socio-economic advancement and continuing to replicate, instead of reversing, unemployment, poverty and inequality.

According to the IRR, the report warned that, “Failures in our schooling systems are denying the majority of young people the chance of a middle-class life.”

Among the positive outcomes highlighted in the report are that:

– pre-school enrolment has increased by 270,4 per cent since 2000, setting a much better basis for future school throughput

– the proportion of people aged 20 or older with no schooling fell from 13 per cent in 1995 to 4,8 per cent in 2016

– the proportion of matric candidates receiving a bachelor’s pass (qualifying for university entrance) has increased from 20,1 per cent in 2008 to 28,7 per cent in 2017

– nearly 100 per cent of schools now have clean water and electricity

– university enrolment numbers are up 289,5 per cent since 1985 and up more than 100 per cent since 1995

– the ratio of white to black university graduates was 3,7:1 in 1991 and 0,3:1 in 2015.

But, as the author of the report and director of IRR, Frans Cronje, warned, “ultimately it is the negatives that overwhelm”. He said these factors are:

– just under half of children who enrol in Grade 1 will make it to Grade 12

– only 28 per cent of people aged 20 or older have completed high school

– a mere 6,9 per cent of matric candidates will pass maths with a grade of 70 to 100 per cent – a smaller proportion than was the case in 2008

– in the poorest quintile of schools, less than 1/100 matric candidates will achieve a distinction in maths

– the black higher education participation rate is just 15,6 per cent while that for Indian and white people (aged 20 to 24) is 49,3 per cent and 52,8 per cent respectively

– the unemployment rate for tertiary qualified professionals has increased from 7,7 per cent in 2008 to 13,2 per cent today.

“Three key deficiencies in the primary indicator that determines the living standards trajectory of a young South African are of particular concern,” wrote Cronje.

The first is the poor quality of maths education; a good maths pass in matric being a key marker in determining access to the middle class.

“While maths education is poor across the board, the quality is worse in the poorest quintile of schools, leaving no doubt that school education is replicating the trends of poverty and inequality in our society,” Cronje said.

He said the second deficiency is the low rate of participation in tertiary education by black people. The labour market absorption rate for tertiary qualified professionals was 75,6 per cent in 2017, as opposed to just 43,3 per cent for the country as a whole – but just 3,1 per cent of black people over the age of 20 have a university degree, compared to 13,9 per cent and 18,3 per cent for Indian and white people respectively.

The third concern is the continuing very high school drop-out rate, with just over half of children completing high school at all.

“In an economy that is evolving in favour of highly-skilled tertiary industries and in which political pressure and policy are being used to drive up the cost of unskilled labour, this means that the majority of those children are unlikely to ever find gainful employment.

“The sum of these three concerns leads to the inescapable conclusion that the education system represents the single greatest obstacle to socio-economic advancement in South Africa,” Cronje concluded.

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