Question NW2942 to the Minister of Basic Education to ask the Minister of Basic Education

Reply:

Ensuring that children attend school during the compulsory schooling age, and striving to increase the percentage of young people, who successfully complete twelve years of schooling - in other words reach and complete Grade 12, are central to the mission of the Department.  A large range of activities and initiatives are aimed at advancing this mission, especially to ensure that vulnerable children, such as those receiving Child Support Grants (CSG) or under foster care, have an opportunity to succeed in school.

These initiatives have been successful insofar as addressing dropping out of school before learners successfully complete the National Senior Certificate; and schooling among children of  compulsory school-going age, has for many years been kept at almost 100%, especially up to Grade 9; though there were some setbacks during the COVID-19 pandemic.  The successful completion of twelve years of schooling in South Africa, is approximately on a par with that seen in other middle income countries.  This fact is provided in several of the Department’s Annual Reports on the results of the National Senior Certificate examinations (available on the DBE website).

Not only has there been steady improvement in the overall rates of school participation amongst children in the compulsory schooling age, and in the overall Grade 12 completion rate, but there have also been improvements for children who are orphans, Child Support Grant recipients and those with disabilities.  According to the STATS-SA's General Household Surveys, in the years 2002-2006, only 68% of 19-21 year-olds with both biological parents deceased, had completed at least Grade 9.  For the years 2018-2021, this percentage had increased to 77%.  Turning to Grade 12 completion rates amongst young people with disabilities, for example, we see that in the years 2002-2006 that only 19% of 21-29 year-olds with a disability, had completed at least completed Grade 12, compared to an estimated 34% in the years 2018-2021.  School attendance rates amongst 7-15 year-olds receiving the Child Support Grants has hovered around 99% ever since 2010.

The problem of learners not successfully completing Grade 12 (or anything equivalent outside the schooling system), should be seen in the context of relatively weak results among many of those learners who do obtain the NSC.  The problem is reflected in the comparably low Grade 9 TIMSS results, even in 2019, and after a couple of decades of improvements, improvements attributable in large part to government’s focus on quality schooling.  Clearly, these improvements should continue.  It is this need that lies behind certain high-level targets in government’s Medium-Term Strategic Framework (MTSF).  For instance, more Grade 12 candidates should achieve above the mark thresholds in mathematics and physical science, enable them to enter university programmes generating critical skills in areas such as engineering, chemistry and financial accounting.

Moreover, it is critical to understand our efforts to promote successful completion of schooling compared to young people dropping out of school.  The current research, conducted by [WHOM]confirms that it is those learners who do not cope with their studies who are the most likely to drop out; and poverty in the home plays a large role here.  According the 2019 General Household Survey, 34% of young people aged 16 to 18 years, are not at school, essentially because they are not coping academically.  Another large factor, according to the same source, shows that 25% of young people blame their parents' inability to pay school fees as their reason to drop out.. Even here, coping academically plays a role; parents and guardians may decide that a child who is not performing well as school, is not worth investing in (See the Department’s series of publications General Household Survey (GHS): Focus on Schooling).

In line with the international and local evidence, and in line with the policy advice provided by organisations, such as the UNESCO, government’s strategies aimed at increasing ‘survival’ to Grade 12, are multi-pronged; with a special emphasis on dealing with the effects of poverty and on improving learning and teaching in the classroom.  The following can be considered key initiatives behind past reductions in dropping out, and likely drivers of future improvements in this regard:

• The National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP). This intervention encourages children to attend school, and promotes learning by reducing levels of hunger and malnutrition, which inhibit successful learning.
• No fee schools. This longstanding intervention ensures that children and youths in poorer communities are not prevented from attending school due to the inability of the household to pay for school fees.
• Policies on teenage pregnancies. Government Notice 704 of 2021 formalised policy on the protection of the schooling of pregnant learners. Among females aged 16 to 18, around 10% did not attend school due to pregnancy, according to the 2019 GHS.
• Ongoing strengthening of the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS). A more focussed curriculum is one reason that has been put forward as a reason for past improvements in South Africa’s performance in international testing programmes – see the Department’s Action Plan to 2024.
• Efforts aimed at improving learning in the early grades. A key government priority is improving reading, and learning and teaching in general, in the early grades. Several interventions contribute towards this, including the shift in the responsibility for pre-schooling from the social development sector to basic education, the Early Grade Reading Study and associated teacher development innovations, and the introduction of the Systemic Evaluation.
• Special examination preparation support for Grade 12 learners. Activities here, aimed largely at ensuring that learners leave school with the NSC, include the so-called winter schools.
• The expansion of the learner-level enrolment and attendance monitoring systems. The Learner Unit Record Information and Tracking System (LURITS), the SA-SAMS school management system and the partnership-driven Data Driven Districts (DDD) initiative have all contributed to a more robust approach to monitoring exactly where in the country dropping out is occurring. These systems proved invaluable for providing information on, for instance, where children were not returning to school during the pandemic.