Thousands of Kids Get No Education

The research comes in the wake of plans by the departments of Basic Education and Higher Education and Training to encourage pupils who have dropped out to complete their studies or to take up a trade at vocational schools.

Minister of basic education Angie Motshekga said one proposal called for the subsidisation of private schools that were dedicated to helping pupils who were repeating matric.

She said schools such as St Anthony's Centre in Boksburg, Gauteng, had "a high success rate" among matric repeats.

"We are thinking of such models because there are lots of kids who have not been able to finish their matric because they have two courses outstanding."

Motshekga, who will meet her education MECs next week, said she would urge provinces to channel some of the money earmarked for adult education to matric repeats.

"The president has challenged us to develop plans to make sure that every South African has been given at least basic skills in reading and writing," she said.

According to the community survey, Gauteng, Western Cape and Northern Cape had the highest number of children not a school while poorer provinces such as Limpopo, Free State and Mpumalanga recorded "very low" numbers.

Fleisch and his co-researchers found that orphans and disabled children were most likely not to be at school, as were those from households that did have formal employment.

Children from households eligible for social grants but not receiving them were also at risk of dropping out of school.

There was a strong likelihood of dropping out among children of single parents, those who were orphaned and those whose parents' whereabouts were unknown.

"Bringing the 408 000 out-of-school children into schools will require complex interventions from a variety of agencies," the report notes.

Fleisch said children started dropping out of school in larger numbers from the age of 15 onwards, some of whom fell pregnant or joined criminal gangs.

"It (dropping out) starts at 15 and continues its downward curve between 16 to 19 years."

Sandra Ambrose, national coordinator for the Disabled Children Action Group, said there were at least 4500 disabled children not receiving any formal education.

This, she added, was due to teachers' reluctance to teach them and a lack of transport to schools.

"It's disturbing. As a parent organisation we feel our children are not part of society. For them to become part of society, they need to be part of the schooling system," Ambrose said.

Noëline de Goede, national director for Epilepsy South Africa, said she knew of several cases where schools had asked epileptic children to stay at home.

"It's a common problem that children with epilepsy are not given their right to quality education and this is absolutely unacceptable. Just because you have a seizure doesn't mean you must go to a special school."

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Social Surveys Africa and the Centre for Applied Legal Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand conducted research looking at reasons why children dropped out of school or attended irregularly.

They found that some of the disincentives to remaining at school included:

The survey noted that the path to dropping out of school usually began with skipping class to smoke or to hang out at shebeens and friends' houses.

The daily burden of poverty, teenage pregnancy and domestic responsibility, including helping with chores, looking after siblings and collecting social grants, were also cited as reasons.

A total of 44 unemployed adults and youths are making a huge difference in the lives of 650 orphans and destitute schoolchildren in impoverished villages in Mpumalanga.

Although they have not been paid for three months, the aftercare workers have been helping children in 11 villages around Schoemansdal for two hours a day with their homework.

The dedicated workers received a monthly stipend of R250 from Thembalethu home-based care - a non-governmental organisation - before funding for the project dried up in March. They make use of local churches and even their own homes to assist the children, who are mostly orphans or from dirt-poor families.

Wendy Ngubane, the orphan and vulnerable children co-ordinator at Thembalethu, said most of the children lived with grannies who could not help with school work because they were largely uneducated. Since the beginning of the year, she has encouraged 20 dropouts to go back to school and has set a target of getting 40 pupils back into school next year. Ngubane said they were trying to get funds to pay stipends for aftercare workers and to provide food for the children in the afternoons. - Prega Govender