Including dropouts in the matric pass rate detracts from the real issues affecting youngsters

On Thursday, the minister of basic education, Angie Motshekga, will release the National Senior Certificate (NSC) examination results for the class of 2023. Immediately after the announcement, we will see the “real pass rate” brigade coming out to tell all and sundry that the results are not real.

Instead of congratulating the young people for their achievements, the “real pass rate” brigade will seek to attract attention to themselves by “calculating” a number that they will try to make us believe is a “real” figure. In truth, the “real pass rate” is fake news.

The argument from the bogus analysis is that learners who did not reach Grade 12 should also be added to the statistics that the minister unveils in the NSC results announcement. If the number of NSC candidates that enrolled in 2023 is 717,377, the pass rate for the class of 2023 will be derived from that number. 

It is often said that each year about one million children in SA start school in Grade 1, and 12 or 13 years later the number of those who sit for the NSC examination is less than a million. There is no intention whatsoever on my part to downplay the dropout rate in our system, but let us ponder a few points. There are many reasons for learners never reaching Grade 12.  

In February 2022, the SA Police Service released statistics showing that 352 children were murdered from October to December 2021 — nearly four children a day. In the same report, the police said that 394 children had survived attempted murder and 2,048 children were victims of physical abuse. Each of these young people, most, if not all of school-going age, must recover from their physical injuries and cope with the mental trauma they suffered from the violence.  

According to the Road Traffic Management Corporation, in 2020, children made up a staggering 34% of the fatalities in road accidents, up from 31% the previous year. In other words, 672 children under the age of nine died while passengers in vehicles. 

I remember vividly in September 2022 when news broke of 19 learners who died in Pongola, KwaZulu-Natal, when a truck and bakkie collided on the N2. Earlier that year, another disaster struck when eight learners died in a crash on their way from school in Mpuluzi, Mpumalanga. 

Who will forget the tragedy that occurred in June 2022 at the Enyobeni Tavern in the Eastern Cape where 21 young people died? 

The deaths of 28 initiates were reported in December last year. Annually, no fewer than 20 boys die in initiation schools in SA. Most, if not all of these young men take a break from school to go to the mountains for the initiation.

We have an urgent task to save the lives of our children. It is sad, troubling too that so many of our young people do not finish school after starting in Grade 1. 

We also have a suicide crisis with young people taking their own lives. In October 2023, the South African Depression and Anxiety Group reported that 9% of teenage deaths were suicides.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Alarm should be raised about South Africa’s rising child suicide rates

There are other social challenges such as teenage pregnancies. The number of births by girls between the ages of 10 to 19 rose from 129,223 in 2019 to 139,361 in 2022. 

Read more in Daily Maverick: Children who give birth to children — Eastern Cape confronts scourge of teenage pregnancy

Early and unintended pregnancies affect young women’s educational, health and social future. While the Department of Basic Education has a policy on the prevention and management of learner pregnancies in schools which aims to protect the right of girls to access education, the reality is that some of them never return to school, while others go back much later and their schooling is disrupted and delayed.

And then some young people spend a part of their lives in rehabilitation centres for drug and substance abuse, while others go to prison for committing crimes, and yet others lead child-headed households and drop out of school to fend for themselves and their siblings. 

When Motshekga speaks this week, she will talk about the learners in the schooling system who have been supported through the social grants so they are not left behind. In her department, the minister has a myriad of measures designed to bring relief to impoverished families, including providing meals through the school nutrition programme, the provision of transport for learners and the provision of learner material at no-fee schools.

From an academic support perspective, the department led by the director-general Mathanzima Mweli presented a compelling report to the education standards monitoring body Umalusi that demonstrated the support given to learners to ensure that none is left behind and that every learner in the system is given the opportunity to finish with a good matric pass. 

Let’s be honest: there is a group of young people who drop out of school and stay with their parents and guardians at home and do nothing. They simply refuse to go to school, without offering any valid reason. 

More subjects have been added to the curriculum to ensure more choice for more learners in the system. Schools also do their best to support learners through weekend classes, and the success of this is showing in the throughput and pass rate. SA’s education system is getting stronger and the minister will provide more detail on the work done in this regard. So let us listen carefully to what she has to say come 6pm on 18 January.

Instead of grandstanding by the “real pass rate” brigade, let us face the facts and deal honestly with the social matters. Point-scoring and finger-pointing merely shift attention from the real challenges we need to tackle. DM