Prega Govender
570,000 children and teenagers were not attending educational institutions in 2016, including more than 45,400 who found education “useless or not interesting”.
About 104,000 were from the compulsory schooling age group of seven to 15 years while the remaining 466,000 were 16 to 18 years old.
These figures are contained in a report titled General Household Survey: Focus on Schooling 2016, which was released by the Department of Basic Education last month.
It has a close working relationship with Statistics South Africa which conducts the survey in about 22,000 households.
The department uses the responses of the survey to assess its progress on access to schooling as well as “the quality, efficiency and equity in educational programmes”.
Almost 99% of seven- to 15-year-olds were in school, which showed that there was “near universal rates for compulsory education”. In contrast, only 85.1% of 16- to 18-year-olds were attending educational institutions.
According to the report, research indicated that the main predictor of dropping out was “poor-quality early education”.
“Encouragingly, no respondent in this age group [seven to 15 years] stated that marriage or lack of transport are reasons for not attending any education institution,” the report stated.
At least 6.3% of the seven- to 15-year-olds were not attending school because they were unable to perform academically, while 2.2% had left after falling pregnant.
A total of 82,995 girls aged 14 years and older reported being pregnant in 2016.
Alluding to those children who found education “useless or not interesting”, the report stated: “As a society, it is concerning that among both the seven- to 15-year-olds and the 16- to 18-year-olds there were noteworthy proportions of out-of-school pupils who stated that the reason for not attending is because they regard education as being of no value to them.”
Martin Gustafsson, an education economist and member of the Research on Socio-Economic Policy (ReSEP) team at the University of Stellenbosch, said the matter of out-of-school children was “concerning” and a problem.
“But what’s also a problem are children who are in school and who don’t learn anything or learn almost nothing. So being in school gives you a certain advantage, but it’s no guarantee that you are getting an education.”
