The Department of Basic Education has put in place measures to address dropout rates in the education system and commits to produce more grade 12 graduates.
The department on Tuesday said it commits itself to further improving the prospects for youth to achieve educational success.
“We understand that there cannot be any short cuts to producing more matric graduates. This must happen through improving the quality of teaching and learning throughout the school system,” said the department.
The department’s measures come as a result of trying to address the challenge of too many youths who do not reach matric and consequently lack any qualification that is well recognised in the labour market.
To address this challenge, the department came up with two main solutions which include increasing the proportion of youths that do attain matric.
“This must be achieved through improving the quality of learning in earlier grades. The high rates of dropout in grades 10 and 11 are really symptomatic of the learning deficits that children accumulate in earlier grades.
“Although factors such as financial constraints, gang involvement and family commitments play a role in dropout, the major cause of dropout is weak learning foundations. For this reason, our interventions to improve the acquisition of foundational numeracy and literacy, especially reading acquisition, will be crucial,” the department said.
It said the Annual National Assessments (ANA) represent one key intervention aimed at strengthening the academic emphasis within primary schools.
The department said the second part of the solution is to develop meaningful educational alternatives for those who will not achieve matric.
“The increasing policy focus on FET colleges, learnerships and apprenticeships, as evident in the National Development Plan (NDP) for example, is therefore an important development.
“The forthcoming implementation of the new Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements for Technical Schools is another example of the prioritisation of technical education. Given the strong emphasis South Africans have traditionally placed on matric, it will be necessary to raise the profile of such alternatives in the public consciousness,” said the department.
Calculating dropout numbers
Meanwhile, the department said comparing grade 1 enrolments to the number passing matric 12 years later, is significantly misleading, and this is mainly because grade 1 enrolments are inflated due to high rates of repetition, partly owing to the participation of under-aged learners.
“For example, there were 1 286 591 grade 1 learners enrolled in 2002 — the year that most of the class of 2013 would have started school, but only 1 111 858 grade 2 enrolments in 2003.
This represents about 175 000 fewer enrolments. This is due to grade repetition and is not a result of drop-out, which is virtually zero at the end of grade 1,” said the department.
However, the department said comparing grade 2 enrolments to matric passes is therefore somewhat more appropriate, but this too is influenced to some extent by grade repetition.
“… while grade repetition inflates the number enrolled in any particular grade, the number passing matric is not similarly inflated because very few people re-write matric having previously passed it. It is difficult to adjust for grade repetition in calculating a throughput rate due to the unreliability of repetition data, especially prior to 2009,” said the department.
Mortality
The department also counted mortality as another factor that affects the calculation, although it says it has a lesser effect.
“Mortality statistics from administrative records indicate that about 1 000 learners die per grade per year. Therefore, this would inflate the baseline number of grade 2 enrolments by about 11 000.
“The ratio of matric passes in 2013 to grade 2 enrolments in 2003 is 40.4%. This is probably an underestimate by about three percentage points due to repetition, mortality and the fact that supplementary National Senior Certificate (NSC) candidates are not yet included,” said the department.
The department said a more stable and meaningful measure of the probability of attaining a matric can be calculated using household survey data.
“This makes it possible to look at a specific age-cohort of the population, say 24 year-olds, and see what proportion of them has matric… Such calculations using Stats SA household survey data confirm that just over 40% of youths end up passing matric,” said the department. – SAnews.gov.za
