Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - June 25, 2006
Prega Govender

A total of 547000 young girls, aged between 13 to 19, abandoned their studies, including a shocking 183000 who did not have money to pay for fees.

The figures, released by Statistics SA, support the findings of a recent report by the Human Rights Commission which attributed the problem to poverty, teenage pregnancy and girls heading households.

The HRC has urged the Department of Education to urgently amend the SA Schools' Act to make it "obligatory" for the state to investigate why pupils fail to attend school. The department has admitted that while "levels of access to school" had increased dramatically since 1994, "more efforts are required to ensure that girls remain in schools".

In a document titled Country Status Report the department conceded that pregnancy among teenage girls remains a challenge.

According to Statistics SA's figures, family commitments, including taking care of sick parents and siblings, forced 75000 young girls to stay at home, while a further 72000 gave schooling a miss after falling pregnant.

The figures indicated that 439000 teenage boys were not at school last year.

Different research, the findings of which have not yet been released, into why children are absent from school has uncovered startling trends. These include:

*A survey on exploitive child labour, conducted at 54 schools in the Nkomazi region of Mpumalanga, showed that 20% of children were working as labourers and domestic workers during school hours;

*Research into pregnancy-related school dropouts in the Durban Metro region found that 187 of the 327 girls, who were pregnant when they dropped out of school, did not return; and

*Preliminary findings of an investigation by the North West Education Department into why pupils of school-going age were not at school revealed that 173 of the 289 pupils in one region were girls.

Charles Raseala, director of communications for the North West Education Department, said their research into out-of-school youth was aimed at finding out the extent of the problem.

Figures released by Gauteng's Education Department reveal that 2542 school girls fell pregnant over the past two years.

In the past six months, 33 pupils dropped out of Limpopo's Moses Mnisi High School, including 24 girls, 19 of whom were pregnant.

The school's principal, Harry Moyo, said at least 157 pupils at his school were the heads of households.

Salim Vally of the Education Policy Unit at Wits University said research into out-of-school youth in Gauteng indicated that protracted poverty, illness (including HIV/Aids) and bad experiences at school forced children to stay away from school.

"For a number of years we've been saying it's a serious problem. We have been trying to get the Education Department to conduct research into it and to act on it," he said.

Vally said more girls were out of school because "the burden of looking after siblings and ill parents falls primarily with young women and girls".

Firoz Patel, deputy director-general for Systems and Planning in the national education department, said the 195000 children in the compulsory age group 7-15 years, who were not attending school, comprised only 1.6% of the school population.

"Our no-fee policy, exempting three million children in more than 9000 schools from paying school fees, will address the problem of children who say they can't come to school because they can't afford fees," he said.

Patel said the bulk of the pupils between 13 and 19 who were not attending school did not fall into the compulsory schooling age group. "Once they pass the compulsory age of 15, we continue providing, but the choice is theirs."

"If you are 17 and you're pregnant, school is not compulsory. You are going to leave school," said Patel.

Dr Helene Aiello, a director at Khulisa, which conducted research at Nkomazi, said of the 1400 girls aged between 12 to 17 who took part in the survey, at least 9% were regularly absent from school.

Aiello's colleague, Pat Sullivan, who is implementing informal educational opportunities for both in-school and out-of-school children at Nkomazi, said: "The bottom line why pupils are not attending school is poverty and HIV/Aids."

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