An advocacy group has unveiled an innovative toolkit in a bid to help schools halve the pupil dropout rate by 2030.
The Zero Dropout Campaign, which is working with four partners to create awareness about SA’s dropout crisis, launched its action summit on Tuesday.
In recent years only 50% of the youth have completed grade 12, according to the General Household Survey.
Titled “Toolkit on school dropout prevention”, the document targets 10 key role players, including governing bodies, school management teams, teachers, pupils, school-based support teams, parents and child- and youth-care workers.
The toolkit outlines how each education role player can monitor absenteeism and potentially prevent a child from dropping out, such as following up with pupils who are absent and working with support structures to address disengagement.
Merle Mansfield, programme director for the Zero Dropout Campaign, said she experienced dropout first-hand as a pupil on the Cape Flats.
There were 300 pupils when she was in grade 8, but this number dropped to 56 in matric.
“At that time it didn’t really bother me and I didn’t necessarily think of it as an issue because it was such a normalised trend within our school and many high schools.”
But later in life she started questioning “why it was commonplace for us to have so few matriculants, even though we have such large numbers of learners who access the education system annually”.
“I really want to inspire everybody to start asking why and to start feeling uncomfortable about the learners who are disappearing from the system.”
I really want to inspire everybody to start asking why and to start feeling uncomfortable about the learners who are disappearing from the system.
— Merle Mansfield, Zero Dropout Campaign
According to her, before a pupil drops out of school there is a process of disengagement.
Mansfield said communities have to start shifting the perception that dropping out is normal and “to see children as not lazy, naughty and disinterested in school because they are not”.
She was aware of innovations to reduce dropout – for example, finding community members who volunteer to track absent pupils and helping teachers to knock on doors to find out why children haven’t returned.
She said the toolkit was aimed at focusing on disengagement, adding: “We want to find out at what level is the learner engaged and participating and how does that correspond to their risk for dropout and repeating a grade.
“For nearly two years we have had disruptions to school attendance and on-off school attendance, and it’s going to take some time to get learners into the normality of attending school.”
Lynn van der Elst, head of care and support for teaching and learning investment at the National Education Collaboration Trust (NECT), said if learning is not interesting, relevant, fun and exciting, pupils will drop out, “not physically, but drop out because they are bored”.
“They don’t see the point. We see young people saying: ‘What’s the point, why are we learning this?’ So I think we need to look at our curriculum and how it is being delivered. Does it suit the children of the 21st century?”
She said young people, even the youngest child, have access to exciting things through social media and other media.
“I think if we don’t make the learning in the classroom exciting, interesting and relevant, we lose our learners and I think that’s a real risk of dropout.”
Nompumelelo Mohohlwane, a researcher based at the department of basic education, said even before the Covid-19 pandemic they saw the highest level of dropout happening when pupils reached the age of 15 or the end of grade 9, which is the end of compulsory schooling.
She said they observed that one of the factors leading to dropout was “weak foundations”.
“We are increasingly realising that it’s often because children haven’t mastered the basic skills. They are now getting to grade 10, gearing up for matric, and they are now being assessed in ways that they are unable to cope with.
“So even if they would desire to stay in the schooling system, they are effectively not learning well enough to continue.”
In the compulsory schooling group about 19,000 have not returned. We are pleased that the non-attendance did not convert to dropout for the majority of children.
— Nompumelelo Mohohlwane, department of basic education
She said recent analysis of administrative data of pupil enrolment in schools in term one in 2020 and 2021 indicated that 16,000 first-time pupils, either grade R or 1, had not participated in schooling, “so parents are delaying the start of school”.
“In the compulsory schooling group about 19,000 have not returned. We are pleased that the non-attendance did not convert to dropout for the majority of children.”
She said pupils’ absence from school did not only mean they missed out on knowledge content for the days they were not at school, but that they also tended to forget what they were taught.
“In early grades especially, you then do not build the required skills. You don’t learn the underlying skills in history and geography because you never learnt to read. You never get to calculus because you never learnt to add.”
According to the toolkit, role players need to focus on absenteeism tracking, data analysis/early warning systems, psychosocial support systems and partnership-building and stakeholder involvement.
Absenteeism tracking refers to “the ongoing, regular and systematic tracking of attendance and absenteeism, through the gathering of data on attendance”.
The teacher’s role in absentee tracking, among others, is to recognise the value in taking daily attendance and following up on pupils who are absent.
Pupils, on the other hand, are expected to report absenteeism of their peers and “other signs of disengagement or distress”.
